In notes accompanying its interim financial results, released on Monday, Telkom has confirmed that by 2015 the slowest broadband package on its fixed-line network will offer download speeds of up to 2Mbit/s, from 384kbit/s now, and up to 40Mbit/s at the top end.
The company has also confirmed it plans to offer double- and triple-play products with “on-demand, media-rich content and converged services”.
TechCentral last week revealed the company’s plans to offer much higher speeds over its digital subscriber line (DSL) network of up to 40Mbit/s and plans to introduce video-on-demand (VOD) products, possibly from international providers such as Hulu, Netflix and Nangu.
The company is considering installing devices called multi-service access nodes, or MSANs, in its telephone exchanges and its street-level distribution cabinets and introducing a DSL technology called very high-speed DSL 2, or VDSL2, that will allow it to offer substantially faster connections.
According to Telkom, it wants to offer “consistently more value” to its customers through higher speeds and bandwidth caps, including uncapped offerings. “Competition, changing customer needs and end-of-life technologies make network transformation an imperative,” the company says in slides accompanying its results for the six months to the end of September.
It says it plans to create a single Internet Protocol network for fixed and mobile convergence and what it calls “super-fast, quality broadband”.
Telkom is understood to be keen to offer both subscription and transactional VOD services, which could pit the company against pay-TV operator MultiChoice, owned by Naspers, which has similar plans. — Staff reporter, TechCentral
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