How do you connect cheaply to fibre?

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bushguru

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We are a small WISP looking to connect into fibre in a neighbouring town up here in Limpopo to get around the fact that our town only has Telkom fibre and we are therefore stuck with load balancing DSL.

Unfortunately, the quotes we've received are prohibitively expensive. The minimum Broadband Infraco could offer us was STM-1 for nearly R140,000 per month. IS offered a 2mbps Diginet line for about R40,000 per month, but that's still too much.

We're looking for 2mbps fibre or Diginet but we need it to cost a lot less as our customer base is still relatively small and we therefore don't have the turnover needed to pay charges like that. We expect to grow and eventually have the money for that nice big STM-1 line but for now we just need to make ends meet without having to rely on Telkom.

Is there anyone selling fibre connectivity at a decent price?
 
portcullis

portcullis

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There are some pretty good deals going with fibre at the moment. Send me a PM with your email address as well as the exact physical address of your data centre / noc and I'll forward the details to people who may be able to help you.
 
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bushguru

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50km - we can get from here to there no problem with our own wireless infrastructure, it's just tapping into the fibre without going bankrupt that's the problem :p
 
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D-Boy

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bushguru said:
We are a small WISP looking to connect into fibre in a neighbouring town up here in Limpopo to get around the fact that our town only has Telkom fibre and we are therefore stuck with load balancing DSL.

Unfortunately, the quotes we've received are prohibitively expensive. The minimum Broadband Infraco could offer us was STM-1 for nearly R140,000 per month. IS offered a 2mbps Diginet line for about R40,000 per month, but that's still too much.

We're looking for 2mbps fibre or Diginet but we need it to cost a lot less as our customer base is still relatively small and we therefore don't have the turnover needed to pay charges like that. We expect to grow and eventually have the money for that nice big STM-1 line but for now we just need to make ends meet without having to rely on Telkom.

Is there anyone selling fibre connectivity at a decent price?
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Why in the world do you want a 2mbps link? its a 2011 thread right?
 
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bushguru

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D-Boy said:
Why in the world do you want a 2mbps link? its a 2011 thread right?
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You do realise that 2mbps fibre is not the same as 2mbps ADSL. Right?

We're a small WISP and we don't need any more than that at this stage. I could go into the details of why this is the case but, frankly, I've got better things to do. ;)
 
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D-Boy

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bushguru said:
You do realise that 2mbps fibre is not the same as 2mbps ADSL. Right?

We're a small WISP and we don't need any more than that at this stage. I could go into the details of why this is the case but, frankly, I've got better things to do. ;)
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I don't know anything about fibre, but a 2mbps connection sounds slow to me, theres no way u can get a 2mbps act like a 2MBps link, aka +-20 whatever meg link, and please correct me, because I'm not a fibre man
 
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bushguru

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D-Boy said:
I don't know anything about fibre
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I can see that. Take my word for it: a 2mbps fibre link is nothing like a 2mbps ADSL line. For starters, you're not sharing it with 50 other people, it's 1 to 1 ratio. In other words I can put 50 customers on my 2mbps fibre line and they'll get the same service they could get from the equivalent ADSL, assuming the ADSL was fibre-to-the-home, which of course it isn't. I'll let the clever people explain exactly why fibre's better, but it's basically to do with copper lines degrading the further you get from the exchange as well as noise affecting line quality. I'm just the office manager, not an engineer, so that's as far as I go with the technical explanations.
 
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ambo

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bushguru said:
You do realise that 2mbps fibre is not the same as 2mbps ADSL. Right?
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Er... :confused: I can connect two nodes with fibre or with a DSLAM and Modem and I can push exactly 2Mbps through them without any difference. I think you are confusing access technologies with service profiles.

In South Africa ADSL services typically have poor performance and that is due to ISPs contending them heavily and Telkom not providing any QoS or TE knobs. There is no reason that ADSL could not perform exactly the same as a fibre if CIR could be assured throughout the network.

Likewise with fibre: I know if FTTH deployments in gated estates where services are sold with the same kind of contention profiles that we see on ADSL along with similar pricing.

The access technology is irrelevant. Even wireless microwave can be indistinguishable from fibre when setup correctly. ;) Whats important is the is the service profile. High contention, low contention or committed/dedicated capacity.
 
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bushguru

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ambo said:
In South Africa ADSL services typically have poor performance and that is due to ISPs contending them heavily and Telkom not providing any QoS or TE knobs. There is no reason that ADSL could not perform exactly the same as a fibre if CIR could be assured throughout the network.
Click to expand...

I think you just answered your own question, there. *If* ADSL were deployed in the same way as fibre is deployed, there would be no difference. But it isn't, so there is. But as I said, I'm not the techie so I'll bow out here - if you guys want to debate the merits of fibre vs ADSL that's fine, but this thread was originally about how does my small company get affordable fibre. I've now got the answer to that question (although not from here) so this is not really my conversation any more.
 
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D-Boy

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