‘Real low cost bandwidth’ from MTN
MTN is investing up to R 1.3 Billion in a national and metro fiber network, promising improved service offerings and far lower bandwidth prices.
The MTN-SA Managing Director, Tim Lowry, said that the high cost of bandwidth and fiber connections, the general lack of backhaul bandwidth and the long waiting period for fiber links from Telkom – typically 12 months – makes self provisioning a very attractive option for MTN.
Lowry said that the anticipated explosion of data services in the next few years will mean that self-provisioning will save the company a large amount of money in future.
MTN further pointed out that its own fiber network will allow for near-unlimited bandwidth – something that is needed to serve their customers better and alleviate the current bandwidth constraints faced by many companies and operators.
Lowry made it clear that MTN has now decided on this initiative and can be expected to move fast in this space. The company expects to self-provision 50% of its entire fiber link network by the middle of 2009.
MTN has completed a large portion of its fiber network in Sandton, Illovo and Rosebank, and that they have already rolled out services on this network.
MTN Network Solutions’ Mike Brierly said that the company will become a market leader in the data space by offering better service level agreements, better service management and improved implementation of services.
Brierly further said that MTN plans on setting a new benchmark on price, offering ‘real low cost bandwidth’ and a true alternative to Telkom’s current Diginet and ATM services.
The company’s initial offerings – an Ethernet MPLS (EMS) service, an Ethernet private line (EPL) service and a Multi-tenant connect service – will range between 2 Mbps and 1 Gbps in speed. Brierly said that they want to lift the de-facto entry level connection speed from the traditional 64 Kbps to 10 Mbps.
Future services over their fiber network will include Ethernet e-LAN, Dual connect, Full redundant connect and Multi-tenant connect service using DSLAMs typically using existing copper infrastructure. Brierly highlighted that their full redundant connect services can comfortably guarantee 99.9% uptime.
MTN will be able to cut down the current Telkom deployment time of around 12 months to between 6 and 12 weeks.
MTN’s initial fiber products will be available to businesses in the Sandton, Illovo and Rosebank areas, but their fibre ring will be expanded to other areas as the demand for access to their fibre network increases.
Other players
MTN is however not alone in building their own fiber network. Vodacom is investing in their own fiber infrastructure which means that there will effectively be a few players in the fiber arena, namely MTN, Vodacom, Neotel-InfraCo and Telkom.
Vodacom said that their fibre network deployment in main metropolitan areas in Gauteng is well underway, which may signal a far richer local bandwidth environment in the near future.
MTN’s Lowry pointed out that they are looking to partner with players like Vodacom and Neotel in deploying a national network, and that collaboration may benefit all parties.
He further said that while there are negotiations between MTN and Telkom, which may result in the cellular giant acquiring Telkom’s fixed line assets, that it will be business as usual at MTN until something concrete transpires.
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