Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) has launched a new hosting facility ? its Umhlanga Tachyon Node ? in La Lucia, KwaZulu-Natal (KZN).
DFA says the hosting facility will act as an aggregation point for Internet service providers (ISPs) to provide businesses in the area with a cost-effective way to easily access high-speed broadband connectivity via the DFA fibre-optic network.
Jacques van Loggerenberg, DFA executive of network architecture and strategy, says businesses are moving significant volumes of data ? either internally or externally ? to data centres. "To improve efficiencies and drive productivity, it is critical these businesses have access to high-speed broadband connectivity by bringing fibre to the business (FTTB)."
According to DFA, the Tachyon node provides several benefits for the ISP and end-user, the most notable being cost savings. "Traditionally, accessing the last mile of fibre networks has been expensive as it was priced according to the distance of the fibre access point from the business premises."
With the Tachyon Node, says DFA, service providers are able to install active equipment closer to the end-user, and reduce fibre connectivity costs.
Van Loggerenberg says, with the Tachyon Node, ISPs do not need to establish their own facilities to access the fibre network. "End-user businesses benefit from using the DFA network as they can draw on services from various ISPs, which stimulates healthy competition in the market."
DFA says, by bringing FTTB to KZN, businesses in the area will be able to access a range of services that could further reduce costs and improve efficiencies, including cloud computing and voice over IP.
DFA pro-actively rolls out fibre links from the aggregation node to the end-user premises in dense business areas across the country. The company plans to set up 111 of these nodes across the country, from large metropolitan areas to rural areas such as Ermelo, Witbank and Empangeni.
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