IS heads for 2Gbps

By Candice Jones, ITWeb online telecoms editor

Johannesburg, 04 Oct 2007

Internet Solutions (IS) will upgrade its international bandwidth to 2Gbps to cater for growing capacity demand.

Alan Bacher, business unit manager of access solutions at IS, says: "We are showing growth in the amount of bandwidth customers are using, as well as in the number of clients we have."

He says IS's client base in the DSL space has grown from around 22 000 to 40 000 clients, an increase of just under 50% over the last financial year.

"Having increased our international bandwidth by 843Mbps over the last 12 months, and with current bandwidth at over 1.7Gbps, we need to keep ahead of demand."

According to Bacher, the increased capacity should reach the 2Gbps mark by the end of November.

Bacher says the company is looking at various tenders that will see it connecting to several other international backbone links over the next few months.

"This will up the capacity even more, which is an ongoing process for IS."

Broadband boom

MyADSL founder Rudolph Muller says there has been a significant increase in the number of broadband users across the country. "We are currently looking at around 600 000 broadband users in SA. I predict this number to grow to 700 000 over the next few months."

He says increases in international bandwidth should be and are continuous for all providers.

To accommodate the increase, IS has started to upgrade its international transit links to 1Gbps, and its links between London and New York to 4 x 155Mbps, says Bacher.

IS uses the undersea SAT3, SAT2 and SAFE cables, together with satellite access mediums, to connect to its international points of presence.

"We are looking at buying into a new undersea cable. All ISPs [Internet service providers] will need to in order to compete fairly with Telkom," he notes.