After significant delays, in part caused by the complexity of managing a project involving three direct competitors, the National Long Distance (NLD) consortium has finally switched on its fibre-optic telecommunications networks between Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal. The
Browsing: Dark Fibre Africa
Serial entrepreneur and Dimension Data cofounder Richard Came is warm and welcoming when he greets me at his hilltop home in Johannesburg’s leafy suburb of Houghton. With a panoramic view of Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, the elegant and enormous house is an apt reminder of the business successes
Open-access fibre-optic telecommunications infrastructure supplier Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) is investing more than R81m over the next six months in 120km of new links in Klerksdorp in North West province. DFA has already laid more than
It will cost R28bn to take high-speed fibre-optic broadband infrastructure into 1,5m South African homes. That’s the estimate by Dark Fibre Africa CEO Gustav Smit, who says there is no proper business case for fibre to the home on a mass scale yet, only
Conduct Telecommunications, a fibre-optic infrastructure developer, plans to spend R500m in the next 12-24 months expanding high-speed communications networks to 100 precincts around the country. The company, which is backed by international private equity firm The Birchman Group
Within the space of a week, all of SA’s four cellular operators have outlined plans to build fourth-generation (4G) mobile broadband networks based on long-term evolution (LTE) technology. But it’s more a marketing effort for now and consumers shouldn’t get too excited
A hotel in Sandton has been connected to the Internet at speeds of 2Gbit/s, or 2 000 times faster than an average 1Mbit/s home connection, thanks to Dark Fibre Africa, a terrestrial fibre company, and Seacom, the submarine cable provider. However, the connection is temporary
Seacom plans to upgrade its subsea telecommunications network to newer fibre-optic switching technology later this year that will more than double the capacity on the system. CEO Mark Simpson says the company will begin tests in the next couple of months with a view to upgrading the US$600m system from
With the abundance of cables landing on SA’s shores, you could be forgiven for thinking it’s one the most connected countries in the world. In a sense, it soon will be: there’s no shortage of international capacity on the way. What’s lacking is widespread local access to take advantage of it. The problem isn’t without solutions, but
The 14 000km West African Cable System (Wacs), the first new sub-sea telecommunications cable along Africa’s west coast since Sat-3 was launched 11 years ago, will be launched officially in about a month’s time. Angus Hay, co-chair of the Wacs management committee and chief technology officer at Neotel, says