Joint fibre project gets under way

By Staff Writer for Neotel

Johannesburg, 08 Jul 2009

A joint project between Neotel, MTN and Vodacom, to lay national long-distance fibre for the telcos, has started.

Neotel's business support services (NBSS) division says the first leg of the project will be ready on time for 2010, despite a three-month delay. The ambitious 5 000km project was initially announced only between MTN and Neotel, with Vodacom joining several months later.

Phase one covers the national route from Johannesburg to Durban (including Pietermaritzburg) - a total of 592km. This portion of the network will then be linked to Richards Bay, the landing point of many of the undersea cables.

This leg of the project will give Vodacom and MTN direct access to Neotel's landing of Seacom and later to Eassy - expected in 2010.

The entire project has become a priority for the three companies, and the national networks will free the mobile operators from Telkom's infrastructure. MTN has indicated it pays R1 billion a year to Telkom for transmission, and hopes to save R200 million by 2010 and R300 million by 2012 through the project.

“This will eliminate dependencies and enable these three companies to really take charge of their own destiny. The optic fibre network will provide Neotel, Vodacom and MTN with almost infinite bandwidth capacity to carry more information (voice and data), at higher speeds, over greater distances using far less power than copper cables,” says NBSS executive head Imran Abbas.

NBSS was formed after Neotel's acquisition of Transtel and was awarded the contract to manage the construction of the networks.

No timelines have been set for the rest of the project; however, MTN indicated earlier this year the surveying on phase two, a link between Cape Town and Johannesburg, had also begun.