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
State-owned telecommunications infrastructure company Broadband Infraco has reduced its net losses in the 2012 financial year ended 31 March 2012, reporting a loss for the year of R95m against a loss of R206m in the 2011 financial year.
Earnings
Dimension Data division Internet Solutions and Convergence Partners, the telecommunications investment vehicle controlled by Didata Africa chairman Andile Ngcaba, are jointly establishing a new business, called SpectraCo, with a view to possibly building a national wholesale wireless broadband network
Investors have expressed keen interest in a undersea broadband cable that would link Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA (the Brics countries) to each other and the US, a promoter of the project said on Thursday. “There have been many parties showing interest in the Brics cable project. To date, a total of
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
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
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
