Exponential growth of services, data and capacity is forcing SA to play catch-up with the rest of the world. However, SA is slipping and has fallen behind in keeping up with the latest technology.
This is according to Dr Angus Hay, CTO of Neotel, who spoke at last week's ITWeb Broadband conference held at the Indaba Hotel in Fourways.
“We do have broadband in SA but we are still falling behind because broadband is changing. The real role of the communications player today is distribution, and the problem that we have today is that distribution has not kept up with the platforms and delivery of services.
“What broadband aims to do is to eliminate that bottleneck at the distribution layer,” said Hay.
Shifting market
Hay compares the South African situation to the UK, where the same network has been in place for 50 years and the government has been forced to intervene to build a new network, which is a similar situation to SA.
He said in order for SA to become a global telecoms player, the country needs to have broadband.
Hay added there has been a shift in the size of the telecommunications market in developing regions where wireless has overtaken and continues to grow against fixed-line.
However, he noted it's been a challenge to rapidly roll out a national broadband fibre-optic network combined with the pressure of high costs. Hay pointed out that Neotel has moved away from a restricted model and decided to build its national backbone and share the high costs with other telecom players.
Following Neotel's strategic partnership with Seacom, Hay explained that the traditional players competing in the broadband market have realised that building a network of this size cannot be done alone. He added that Neotel is seriously looking into fibre to the home, which he said hinders on business case and channel partners.
“SA is starting to take up its proper role as the hub of southern Africa. This is making a difference to the quantity of bandwidth and wholesale costs and reduced prices will filter through. The West Africa Cable System is 5.12Tbps, and the project is under way and due in 2011.”
Hay believes LTE is going to overtake WiMax as the future fourth generation of mobile platforms. He warned that in order to drive these technologies, SA will need five times the amount of spectrum it currently has.
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