Moving towards its brand revitalisation and relaunch campaign, which kicks off mid-May, Broadband Infraco is proud to take part in the coinciding commercial launch of the West African Cable System (WACS), as one of the anchor investors, in the creation of an historic telecoms linkage of the Western African intra-country connectivity, which is geared towards improving bandwidth connectivity and intra-country trade, among other things.
WACS was initiated by the South African government as a collaborative effort of African governments and leading telecommunications operators within and outside of South Africa, as part of the government's vision on the growth of telecommunications both in South Africa and indeed the rest of the continent.
Broadband Infraco has invested at the highest possible level in WACS - a Tier 1 investment - thereby entitling this company to 11.4% of the total capacity on the WACS system.
In the one year since the landing of the cable was first announced, Broadband Infraco has moved swiftly to ensure that processes and systems are geared towards the commercialisation of its share of the total capacity and this will culminate in the apportioning of such capacity in accordance with the national delivery imperatives, to address both economic bottlenecks, as well as geo-socio-political and socio-economic strains in the country.
Its share of the total capacity offers the country a strategic opportunity to fulfil the vision of broadband-for-all by 2020 and the overall company's mandate to further reduce the cost of telecommunications in the country, thereby unlocking the country's full growth potential, addressing the country's developmental imperatives through the active facilitation of the process of enabling an e-government philosophy, in partnership with other state-owned vehicles and telcos in the private space.
Broadband Infraco's participation in WACS is also the epitome of the realisation of one of the critical NEPAD goals of a truly connected Africa, realised through the growth of the continent's telecommunications sector. As such, Broadband Infraco will provide connectivity to other licensed telecommunications operators in their respective countries.
Said Deputy Minister of Public Enterprises, Ben Martins: “Through Broadband Infraco, the South African government is proud to be a pioneering partner on the West African Cable System (WACS), a cable that will light up large areas of the west coast of Africa. For the first time in Africa's history, open access connectivity will liberalise African ICT markets in Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Togo.”
Broadband Infraco's involvement in the development, and subsequent investment, in WACS was done to inject efficiencies into the international connectivity market in South Africa to reduce the high costs of international connectivity that was stifling growth in the country. One of the main objectives was to secure international connectivity and capacity in support of the projects of key national importance (that required high-capacity international connectivity), being championed by various state vehicles, chief among them being the active work of the Department of Science and Technology.
Seventy percent of the Broadband Infraco-owned WACS capacity will be dedicated towards projects of key national interest and the remainder will be dedicated towards supporting other government projects that require international capacity, including ensuring commercial availability of capacity to other telecommunications operators that require wholesale capacity.
Says Chief Executive Officer of Broadband Infraco, Puleng Sejanamane: “The company is in the process of rolling out an IP/MPLS core network between Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban (initially), in order to provide customers with the option of buying long-distance IP/Ethernet services as an alternative (or in addition to) SDH or Ethernet/SDH.
“The benefit of this is that IP/Ethernet technology is not tied to SDH capacities and therefore allows for smaller increments of bandwidth, such as 100Mbps. It also means customers will require less expensive equipment to be connected to the Broadband Infraco network and customers can also expect future offerings that allow multiple customers to co-locate network, server and storage equipment and interconnect to its points of presence through various container hosting solutions.”
Background information
National connectivity:
Broadband Infraco has served as an enabler in respect of the following:
* Main backhaul provider to the Second Network Operator (Neotel);
* Indirect backhaul provider to Cell C and State IT Agency;
* Only connectivity for MTN to the EASSY undersea cable;
* Backhaul connectivity for a major route in the golden triangle for Vodacom.
Regional connectivity:
Broadband Infraco provides for five of the six bordering countries' connectivity enablement and hence the enablement of regional operators, like Liquid Telecoms, Seacom, Internet Namibia, etc. Regional connectivity has been established to the following countries: Namibia, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Plans are defined to extend connectivity further to Botswana such that the entire SADC region is connected.
International connectivity:
International connectivity is a function of the West African Cable System (WACS) marine cable implementation, of which Broadband Infraco owns an 11.1% stake as a Tier 1 investor. The majority of the capacity is intended to support key projects of national interest, eg SANREN, SKA, KAT, etc.
Projects of national interest:
Square Kilometre Array (SKA); Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) and the Karoo Array Telescope (KAT). Broadband Infraco, in conjunction with Neotel, successfully completed the initial phase for the SKA project, which is the SALT/KAT (SANReN and KAT) project, in October 2011. The capacity required by the CSIR (Meraka) is 2 x 10GE services. The route spanned over 300km, ie from Cape Town to Laingsburg, Sutherland and Hutchinson, finishing at Carnavon. Broadband Infraco commenced with deploying its network infrastructure in March 2011, using the latest DWDM equipment for this project. The project was completed successfully and handed over to the CSIR in October 2011.
Provinces and municipalities:
Broadband Infraco has commenced strategic engagements with both municipalities and provinces in a drive to get involved with all provinces and major municipalities.
“Broadband access and speed is crucial to South Africa's economic future and indeed to the objectives of the New Growth Plan/National Development Plan of the government. Broadband Infraco is extremely proud to represent the government's share of the overall investment and to therefore navigate the government's vision, through our technical capacity, and is therefore a catalyst in the positioning of South Africa's future growth,” concluded Chairperson of the Board of Broadband Infraco, Mandla Ngcobo.
Our clients, among others:
* MTN
* Neotel
* Liquid Telecoms
* Vodacom
* ITN
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