Tata Communications is increasing its investment in Africa, with a specific focus on SA in light of the upcoming soccer Fifa Soccer World Cup.
In preparation for the event, Tata is putting in place a private line service between SA and Europe. This connectivity between the countries is meant to support international broadcast customers that wish to telecast the World Cup, says Tata.
“Tata Communications plans to capitalise on the cable systems that have been built out in Africa. The cables are the backbone on which our variety of connectivity and managed services will ride,” says Srinivasa Addepalli, senior VP of corporate strategy.
The connection between SA and Europe will be delivered over the submarine cable systems Seacom and SAT-3, and will include local access to the World Cup International Broadcast Centre (IBC) to serve media customers directly. Customers will be provided with a network from the IBC to their sites in Europe, says the company.
“The 2010 Fifa World Cup, in SA, will place an unprecedented capacity demand for IT resources, power, space, bandwidth and expertise on SA's service providers, thereby creating tremendous opportunities for all of us,” says Vinod Kumar, president and COO, Tata Communications.
More plans for SA
The company already owns a 56% stake in national operator, Neotel, and opened a data centre in Johannesburg last year. Earlier this month, Tata unveiled a second data centre in Cape Town.
Both centres have been constructed to international standards, integrated into the company's global first tier IP network, and have been designed to minimum N+1 specifications, says Tata.
According to the company, the data centres aim to provide infrastructure and managed services, including collocation, hosting, security and cloud computing.
“This will enable our customers to achieve faster time-to-market and focus on their market strategy, while removing the need to undertake capex for infrastructure that is not their core business to own or manage,” says Kumar.
Extending to Africa
“Tata Communications is also investing in submarine cable capacity on the east and west coasts of Africa, to provide connectivity to multiple growing markets in this region. We are also creating partnerships to offer IP/MPLS/Ethernet services to customers in and out of Africa,” says Addepalli.
He adds that Tata is also a participant in the West African Cable System (WACS). WACS is a submarine fibre-optic cable that will link countries in Southern Africa, Western Africa and Europe, with at least 3.84Tbps of international bandwidth.
Tata has signed a partnership agreement with AccessKenya to establish a first tier Internet point-of-presence (POP) for Tata Communications, in Nairobi, Kenya. “The IP POP is configured to automatically offer redundant paths for Internet traffic going north, towards Europe, and southwards, to SA, as well as to Asia and India over the Seacom cable system. We are exploring similar partnerships in other key markets in Africa,” explains Addepalli.
Addressing concerns of voice still dominating traffic in Africa, Addepalli says: “Voice does dominate the traffic mix in most markets in their initial years of telecom development; however, the pace of growth in data demand picks up rapidly with the availability of good quality and economic connectivity.”
He adds that the economic development and growth in several parts of Africa is attracting several global corporates to invest in and expand their presence in Africa. He feels that this, combined with growth in broadband penetration, will create a surge in demand for data connectivity.
Other investments
Tata Communications is continuing its growth strategy of partnership, investment and infrastructure development in emerging markets.
The company plans to invest $200 million in the Middle East over the next two years to develop telecoms infrastructure and managed services.
Part of the investment will go towards opening six new telepresence rooms across the Middle East and Africa, says Tata.
It adds that, besides the new telepresence rooms, a major part of the $200 million investment will go into expanding the Tata Global Network (TGN), with the construction of the TGN-Gulf cable system that is being deployed in the Middle East.
The TGN-Gulf cable will be completed in the second half of 2011. It will act as a gateway to the TGN network and will provide high-speed bandwidth.
Share