Voice and data service provider, storm, has underpinned a long-term SA growth strategy with a R2 million network and infrastructure upgrade. The move - which included a switch from satellite to fibre optic cable - ideally positions storm to take advantage of the market growth which industry deregulation will spawn.
Says Lex van Wyk, head of storm's IP network: "Phase one of our upgrade involved the move from satellite to fibre optic cable for our international bandwidth requirements - a decision taken shortly after the introduction of the undersea SAT-3 cable system. The migration took two weeks and was completed by December 2002 with clients immediately benefiting from higher speed, lower latency and the elimination of seasonal satellite network outages due to sunspots.
"Phase two brought the installation of Cisco 7000 series routers - one in each of SA's major centres: Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. The new hardware significantly increased network capacity and quality. And because the routers also support multi-protocol label switching (MPLS), Storm will now be able to offer greater network security and better infrastructure resource management. But arguably the most compelling benefit of the Cisco routers is the increased voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) and virtual private network (VPN) processing capabilities it delivers to our network," he says.
VOIP refers to the delivery of voice via public or private networks, rather than over traditional public switched telephone networks (PSTNs). It is faster to implement, cheaper to run and easier to maintain than legacy telephone networks, positioning it as an ideal communications technology for businesses in SA. Although the technology is not currently available in SA due to regulatory issues, storm is confident that this will be resolved within the next 12 months.
Van Wyk concludes: "Storm is encouraged by recent developments in the telecoms sector and looks forward to a deregulated industry. With our upgraded network, we are ideally poised for growth via the delivery of world-class voice and data services to our approximately 4 500 customers in SA."
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Storm is the South African retail brand for STWS, a leading low-cost voice and data service provider for the African market. Focusing exclusively on the needs of business users, storm was launched in Cape Town in June 1999. Storm's goal is to challenge the major players in the telecoms market by consistently providing innovative voice and data products and services that help companies to communicate more efficiently and cost-effectively.
Storm currently provides over 4 000 South African businesses with a range of high quality voice and data communication services including storm international, storm cellular, storm access, storm fax and storm sms. Storm international lowers the cost of a business's international calls through its latest callback technology. Storm cellular and storm fax reduce the cost of calls to cellular phones and the sending of faxes. Storm offers Internet connectivity, which includes domain name registration, Web site design and server hosting services. Furthermore, storm is positioning itself to offer converged voice and data services on one network, once deregulation of the local telecommunications market takes place.
Owning and managing its own network, storm will continue to differentiate itself in the South African market by providing value-added services such as its newly launched Customer Zone and VOIP (once legalised).
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