Lower ADSL prices promised through IPINX
In 2009 there were numerous positive developments in the South African broadband market, including the landing of SEACOM, price reductions on the SAT-3/SAFE cable system and locally Dark Fibre Africa extending its national fibre network. The benefits of these developments are however slow to filter down to ISPs, business and consumers.
A few industry experts have now joined forces to establish IPINX, an initiative which will enable Internet Service Providers to pass the benefits of more affordable local and international bandwidth to their subscribers. The newly formed company will pass the benefits of wholesale carrier and access neutral connectivity to smaller providers enabling them to offer services that are more advanced than the current reseller models available.
Marius Oberholzer, CEO of IPINX, explains: “Our passion is to provide carrier and neutral access connectivity to operators and companies that have been unable to leverage scale to their benefit. Our business model is designed to deliver core services to ISP’s and corporates, but at the same time leave them to be innovative and create their own custom solutions. Furthermore we plan to operate on a simple cost-recovery plus fair margin basis and to treat everyone the same.”
IPINX will be offering Service Providers and Companies access to a range of broadband access mediums on a wholesale basis, namely scalable Telkom IPC/ADSL, iBurst, and Metro-Ethernet. In addition IPINX offers international transit via Seacom SDH connectivity to Level3 in the UK and alternatively SAT3/SAFE if required.
“By leveraging lower Seacom pricing and deliver it at sub-STM1 levels to providers, everyone can finally afford Seacom bandwidth.” notes Oberholzer. Hosting, Billing and Radius forms part of a complete solution delivered within the data centre.
An addition to the wholesale services IPINX will also offer a completely free, independent Internet Exchange point is available to encourage settlement free peering between providers. “Peering is not rocket science, and the exchange of internet traffic between providers should not be either.” comments Oberholzer.
Connectivity to JINX and Neotel’s datacentre is also available, and Oberholzer points out that the core network is fully N+1 redundant regards power, connectivity and equipment. Two separate municipal power feeds, and triple UPS and generator backed power feeds are available.
The IPINX network went live in December, and the first anchor tenant is already utilizing IPINX’s IPConnect access for its ADSL user base and transits its traffic via Seacom international bandwidth, whilst using SAT3/SAFE as a redundant failover. The second anchor tenant — a major broadband provider – is currently testing IPINX enabled ADSL services.
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