DFA scoops prestigious SatCom Award

Issued by IT Public Relations for Dark Fibre Africa

Johannesburg, 04 Jun 2013

Local open access dark fibre infrastructure provider, Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), has been awarded the prestigious 'Backhaul Provider of the Year 2013' title at the recent SatCom Awards.

SatCom 2013, Africa's satellite, telecommunications and broadcast expo, was held at Sandton Convention Centre recently. It is an event where Africa's satellite and telecommunications community meets to discuss its capacity and connectivity challenges, as well as to look at new opportunities and new solutions.

DFA achieved first place in the category 'Backhaul Provider of the Year 2013'. The criteria used for judging the category was based on innovation in providing capacity to clients, quality of service, coverage to clients and innovation to respond to market demands.

DFA's entry was based on building the country's only diverse fibre-optic link from Yzerfontein to its own networks' interconnect site, in Plattekloof, Cape Town. This link, which was built in record time, connected South Africa to the new 14 000 kilometre West Africa Cable System (WACS) in order to accelerate access to broadband in South Africa.

The company's CEO, Gustav Smit, thanked all DFA customers and staff for their support over the past five-and-a-half years. "The solution provided by DFA at the Yzerfontein landing station proves that DFA is a company that is committed to innovative, quality driven, customer-focused solutions for our customers and partners; qualities that are ingrained in the DFA value system."

See also

DFA positions itself for future growth

Klerksdorp gets R81m fibre injection

Dark Fibre Africa (DFA)

Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), a local open access dark fibre infrastructure provider, specialises in the financing, building and installation of carrier-neutral, open access ducting infrastructure. The company started rolling out its network in metropolitan areas in October 2007 and has already laid in excess of 7 300 kilometres of infrastructure that is open to all licensed players, on equal terms.

This infrastructure is commissioned by licensed telecoms and Internet operators, which provide high-speed voice, data and video services to customers. The underlying business principle is that of an independent 'open access' infrastructure. With DFA acting purely as landlord, the infrastructure is entirely operator-neutral and does not differentiate between users.

The basis of the model is that DFA is building and managing a first-class physical infrastructure for any licensed operator to take advantage of. Licensed operators now have a ready-made infrastructure on which to build their differentiating converged services, bringing these services to market quicker, thereby enjoying earlier revenue generation.

There is a state-of-the-art network monitoring centre in Rivonia (Johannesburg) that provides operators with outsourced fibre network management services and offers continuous communication with clients should the unthinkable incident occur. Any service provider, licensed to do so by ICASA, may rent fibre from DFA for their own transmission and backbone infrastructure purposes.

DFA assumes the role of physical infrastructure developer, funds the rollout, and on completion, provides all operators with a first-class, secure ducting infrastructure on which licensed operators can build their services. The deployment of metro and long-haul open access ducting, optimised for fibre network deployment, will enable larger users of communications capacity to enjoy logical separation and ownership of communications capacity, while sharing the same physical right of way and access routes with other carriers.

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