When the highly anticipated Seacom cable goes live at the end of June, corporate connectivity customers can expect more competitive international network access, with higher connectivity speeds.
However, according to Internet Solutions (IS), one of Seacom's anchor tenants, the real business benefit of the undersea cable will be the converged service provider's ability to provide customers with better business services over more redundant connectivity solutions.
“The introduction of Seacom will remove the reliance network providers have on the Telkom-owned SAT-3 cable, which will make the market more competitive, not only in terms of price, but also service offerings,” says Hillel Shrock, Business Solutions Director at IS.
“This is because the Seacom cable will offer our customers an additional route out of South Africa at price points not set by Telkom. However, we don't see many corporate customers moving over to Seacom as their sole means of Internet connectivity, as a high level of redundancy is a requirement for this segment. Rather, corporate customers can benefit from Seacom by using it as an additional means for international connectivity, which will complement their existing connectivity capabilities. As the only provider of comprehensive aggregated connectivity solutions in the country, we see the introduction of Seacom as an important addition to our service mix.” IS has access to all the cable systems connecting SA to the rest of the world.
IS' investment in Seacom has been secured with an indefeasible long-term lease, which gives IS a substantial allocation of capacity on the undersea cable. “With this capacity secured, we are finalising the service level parameters of our offerings, based on live testing, and will be ready to deliver this service to our customers when Seacom goes live at the end of June,” says Shrock. “We will of course offer a standalone Seacom connectivity solution, but see the real value in bundling the service with our other existing connectivity solutions. This will ensure we are the first provider to market with a fully aggregated and redundant service offering that includes bandwidth provided by Seacom. This will be ideally suited for customers transferring mission-critical data and running their business processes across our network.”
An additional benefit that Seacom will offer is the opportunity to bring more bandwidth-heavy hosted applications to market. “To date, international bandwidth capacity has restricted the use of online tools to the likes of high-definition videoconferencing. We therefore expect the collaborative and content sharing online environment to grow rapidly once Seacom comes online,” states Shrock. “Therefore, it is also a key driver for the applications, hosting and virtualisation markets in this country, and we are looking forward to the opportunities it will bring to our established hosting and managed services business.
“IS has always been at the forefront of corporate networks and broadband, so we are very excited to offer our customers this next iteration of high-speed connectivity,” says Shrock. “We also see Seacom as the key to opening up more of the local broadband market as the demand, which was previously stifled by prohibitive costs, is expected to return,” he concludes.
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