Full speed ahead
Andy Brauer, chief technology officer at Business Connexion, said the telecommunications industry was at a point where everything was changing rapidly, including technology, legislation and business models.
“The key driver for these changes is convergence. This convergence is not unique to South Africa but is a global trend,” Brauer said.
He said there were a number of rapidly evolving telecommunications packages and companies were now looking to provide triple-play services (voice, video and data) over the same medium.
This means that South Africa could soon see a traditional telephone line carrying not only voice but also Internet and TV into the home through the same cable.
“The advent of high-definition TV (HDTV), which was launched this month in the UK, shows how important the broadcast aspect is becoming, while the concept of Internet protocol TV (IPTV) on mobile devices puts a further spin on this concept,” Brauer said.
He said the recently licensed second network operator (SNO) had been fairly quiet so far but when the SNO made its offerings known it was unlikely to drop prices as this would seriously challenge the existing business cases.
“What we are likely to see is the SNO using fibre infrastructure for long-haul services,” Brauer said.
“This would be good for the business community in terms of backup for national infrastructure, as it will provide more resilience.”
Bashier Sallie, managing executive for network field operations at Telkom, said that the telecommunications market in South Africa is increasingly competitive.
“The SNO was licensed in December 2005 and Telkom is engaged in discussions with the SNO regarding interconnection and facilities leasing. A number of under-serviced area licences are licensed and operational,” Sallie said.
The market has five broadband service providers, including Telkom, and in the data and Internet arena there are a number of value-added network (VAN) service providers and Internet service providers (ISPs) operating and competing aggressively.
“Competition is driving IP [Internet protocol] demand. The proliferation of data and Internet services is providing an ideal environment for IP-based-services competition,” Sallie said.
He said voice traffic as well as connections had remained stable, although the company had experienced tremendous customer response to its Telkom Closer calling plans.
Elia Tsouros, business development executive at Verizon Business SA, said that converged access was becoming a reality due to market liberalisation.
“A global, converged network changes the telecommunications landscape completely, resulting in the emergence of new services, applications and approaches,” Tsouros said.
He said that 2006 had shown a rapid increase in the number of corporate customers pursuing voice-over-IP (VoIP) opportunities.
However, there were still a number of legislative limitations that were hindering its rollout and uptake.
In addition, he said that the unclear position of Independent Communications Authority of South Africa had delayed the implementation of the Electronic Communications Act, which meant that large industry monopolies were still being permitted to exist.
“Today’s competitive business environment requires companies and consumers to adopt more effective ways of integrating communications devices and wireless and wireline networking technologies.
“As a result, the uptake of wireless and other broadband technologies has increased during the past few months,” Tsouros said.
Emphasising the demand for broadband access is the success of Vodacom’s 3G.
Pieter Uys, chief operating officer at Vodacom, explained that the company had introduced 3G to South Africa just over a year ago.
“Now we are bringing our customers the fastest mobile Internet access available in South Africa — 3G with HSDPA [high-speed downlink packet access].
“3G HSDPA delivers performance comparable to today’s ADSL and wireless LAN services, but with the added benefit of mobility,” Uys said.
Users could use this fast access to browse the Internet and download e-mail, send and receive SMS messages and access their company networks.
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