Neology plans open access broadband network

Rudolph Muller

Rudolph Muller is the editor at MyBroadband and covers telecoms and broadband news. Rudolph comes from an academic background, but left the University of...

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Neology, founded by well known IT and networking experts Roelf Diedericks, Regardt Van De Vyver and Matthew Austin, has been short listed in the Johannesburg Broadband Network Project.

The company is well known in the telecoms space for their proof-of-concept WiFi network in Tshwane, and they have various other projects on the go in the rest of Africa, notably two WiMax deployments in Kenya and Burkina Faso.

Neology will now build a demonstration network using fiber-to-the-premise, WiMax, Broadband over Power Lines and Wi-Fi technologies. The City of Joburg is not prescriptive regarding the technologies used, but previously made it clear that it must be broadband – hence above 2 Mbps.

Neology Network Details

Neology says that they will display the wholesale systems, integration and access network technologies contained in their proposal for the COJ Broadband Project's
RFI phase 2.

This includes demonstrating a Metropolitan Ethernet Core, Fibre to the premises, Broadband over Powerline, WiMAX, and WiFi technologies as well as all the operational, business support, and billing systems to support an Open Access Network.

Neology points out that Open Access Network principles allow multiple service providers, infrastructure providers and the City Assets to be utilized in concert. This is a good way to stimulate competition and cooperation between service providers and infrastructure providers.

A unique concept in Neology's Open Access model is the "Service Exchange", which is effectively an almost zero-rated peering and collocation point in the COJ network, for Service Providers. This should stimulate free peering between providers, and perhaps truly realize the goals of free local bandwidth and VOIP calls – even if it is limited geographically to Johannesburg.

Neology will not be supplying internet services directly, but rather offering managed wholesale services to service providers in the market.

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