IS PoPs African expansion

Johannesburg, 20 Dec 2005

Internet Solutions (IS) today announced the continuation of its expansion into the rest of the African continent with the activation of a new point of presence (PoP) in Accra, Ghana.

This is the third PoP to be initiated on the continent after similar points went live in Mauritius and Namibia earlier this year.

The new connectivity infrastructure, which terminates on SAT3 in London, has an additional fail-over capacity via VSAT connection.

"The VSAT fail-over ensures our West African customers get a totally reliable service, with a minimum of over 99% up time," says Jacques Rautenbach, manager of Africa Solutions at IS.

The new PoP in Accra offers MPLS (Multi-Protocol Label Switching) alongside satellite service. Data is relayed locally via two microwave networks.

"Currently with a two-megabit capacity, it can easily be expanded to meet all the needs of our corporate customers, especially banks and international organisations. Standard Chartered Bank and the Central Bank of Ghana are our first customers on the node," Rautenbach says.

IS worked on this project with Comsys, an ISP in Ghana which provides VSAT service across Western African countries.

The company`s spokesperson Michelle Branko says IS is also scheduled to set up new connectivity nodes in Zimbabwe (January), Botswana (February) and Angola (March) next year.