Just when telecommunications industry players and analysts thought SA couldn’t possibly get any more undersea broadband infrastructure, news is emerging of a raft of new cable systems that will serve both SA and the region. On Monday, Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA — the so-called Brics countries — announced plans for a new high-capacity
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Five years ago, SA had one cable, Sat-3, running down Africa’s west coast and connecting it to the global Internet. Today the continent is surrounded by high-capacity cables, with plenty more, even bigger systems to come. There are now so many cables and such a great deal of capacity that Steve Song, author of the popular
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
Next month, the gigantic West African Cable System (Wacs) will come online, bringing around 400Gbit/s of submarine fibre capacity to SA at launch. But what does this increase in capacity mean for SA consumers and Internet service providers? Sean Nourse, executive for connectivity at Internet Solutions, says that although the effects of Wacs
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
When he isn’t talking at technology conferences and seminars, or travelling to them, 49-year-old Steve Song lives and works in Durbanville near Cape Town. He’s perhaps best known for his map of the various submarine cables that have landed in Africa in recent years, and for his passionate advocacy of the use of television white-spaces
Convergence Partners chairman Andile Ngcaba hinted strongly on Tuesday that he wants to build an African version of Telehouse Europe, the carrier-neutral colocation facility based in London’s Docklands that serves as the main hub of Internet traffic in the UK. Speaking at an industry panel organised Vodacom subsidiary
Convergence Partners, the technology investment vehicle controlled by Dimension Data Africa chairman Andile Ngcaba, wants to work with partners to build a multibillion-rand national wholesale mobile broadband network using long-term evolution (LTE) technology. TechCentral has learnt exclusively that Convergence Partners
Consumers can look forward to even cheaper broadband prices, with many new undersea cables set to come online within the next 18 months. It is unclear how much of a decrease is likely, but talk in the industry is of a 10% to 20% drop in local prices
Troubled state-owned telecommunications wholesaler Broadband Infraco has promised to ramp up its spending from next year as it seeks to establish more network points of presence in towns and cities across the country. Newly appointed chief technical officer Kiruben Pillay