FibreCo, the fibre-optic telecommunications infrastructure provider co-owned by Dimension Data’s Internet Solutions, Cell C and Convergence Partners, will begin work on the next leg of its network in the next three months to link the coastal cities of East London, Cape Town and Durban.

The company, which has already begun trenching a route linking Gauteng and East London, is building an alternative and wholesale open-access fibre network that will compete with networks operated by companies such as Broadband Infraco and Telkom.

The next leg of the network will connect East London to Cape Town and East London to Durban. “The key one is the leg from East London to Cape Town because it’s longer and there are a number of sensitive areas along the route,” says FibreCo CEO Arif Hussain says.

Work has begun on the 1 000km-long Gauteng to East London route, which has been split into 12 links of 80km to 100km each. A repeater unit will be situated at the end of each of these links. Each link is being tackled as a subproject, with construction and project management being overseen by ZTE.

Phase one of the project involves the Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban routes, connecting to submarine cable landing stations on the north coast of KwaZulu-Natal and on the west coast, north of Cape Town. “There will be a lot of rural areas in between that will be connected, which will help address the base level of demand we think needs to be there for this open-access infrastructure to be viable,” Hussain says.

The link between Gauteng and East London will pass through a number of smaller towns, including Reddersburg, Jamestown, Rouxville, Queenstown, Stutterheim, Aliwal North and Smithfield.

“Cell C is one of our anchor customers, so it’s important for us to break out to give them as much flexibility we can in using the network,” Hussain says. “If you just had to take urban demand, it wouldn’t drive as much take-up of this capacity as we want. The more population coverage we can reach and the more points at which we can give access to centres of population, the more attractive our network will be.” — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media