Neotel hits back after SEACOM reports
Recent reports emerged that some local operators have been experiencing stability issues with their SEACOM bandwidth, most likely caused by problems with the cable system’s terrestrial backhaul network. The blame has been laid at Neotel’s feet, and the company admitted that a recent prolonged outage was caused by a failure on its network.
“There are three routes available to protect the Seacom service, but this morning two of them were down. There was a fiber break on the Transnet infrastructure on the main route between Stanger and Empangeni, as a result of vandalism,” said Wandile Zote, executive head of communications at Neotel.
“It automatically shifted to the second route, but there was a second break on the alternative route between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town, therefore we have now had to manually shift to the 3rd route which runs through Durban, Pietermaritzburg and Bloemfontein.”
The instability of bandwidth has caused well known ISP Cybersmart to put its SEACOM plans on hold, a decision which MD Laurie Fialkov said was necessitated due to “four long outages” over the last few weeks and high latency experienced on the system.
SEACOM CEO Brian Herlihy said that “Cybersmart purchased a product from TATA/Neotel which serviced them from Cape Town – a product that SEACOM does not yet offer. This product has had several outages since they went live.”
Herlihy added that none of the outages referred to by Cybersmart are with the SEACOM cable, and that they had 100% up time since the launch. TENET CTO Andrew Alston confirmed Herlihy’s claims, and recently said that they have experienced no downtime on the SEACOM system itself.
This leaves the blame for the outages and the high latency at the feet of Neotel’s network. Neotel has hit back, saying that action has been taken to ensure that the backhaul availability remains within carrier standards.
“Neotel has previously acknowledged that there have been two service-affecting failures of the primary and alternative backhaul routes of SEACOM since commissioning, and has provided details in the interests of transparency. Action has been taken to ensure that the backhaul availability remains within carrier standards in future, by providing three independent routes,” said Neotel’s Executive Head of Technology, Dr. Angus Hay.
“The latency of the SEACOM route between Midrand and London is very stable and consistent with figures published by SEACOM. It is broadly determined by the length of the fibre, and not by any equipment; some additional delay is added in routing to a customer in Cape Town.”
Neotel said that with the current cable configuration, the total round trip delay (a measurement at the transmission layer, not the IP layer) is somewhat higher than Cybersmart’s expectations, when compared to SAT-3, which lands directly in Cape Town. “Changes are planned that will reduce this latency, which is particularly a concern for Cape Town customers,” Hay added.
“The end-to-end transmission on SEACOM between Midrand and London is continuously monitored, and runs error-free. With regard to the service delivered to Cybersmart, some error-rate problems were encountered on the access link provided to Cape Town, which may also have contributed to variable latency at the IP layer, and these are being addressed.”
Hay said that given the combination of their low latency requirement and the error-rate issues, Neotel agreed with Cybersmart to route the service via SAT-3 to avoid downtime. “Neotel is the only operator able to offer the flexibility of using any of the cable systems that land in South Africa, depending on the customer’s requirement,” said Hay. “As has been acknowledged by Cybersmart, as a customer of Neotel’s via an international provider, they have now been provided with an alternative service that meets their contractual requirements.”
“SEACOM continues to deliver the performance promised to customers (error-free, and with acceptable latency), most of whom connect in Johannesburg. SEACOM and Neotel are working to improve performance for customers across the country,” Hay concluded.
One industry player, who asked to remain anonymous, however suggested that the network problems may not be only Neotel’s fault, but also involves Infraco’s fibre network. The Infraco network – used by Neotel – has a fair amount of overhead fibre which is at higher risk of cable breaks which can result in prolonged downtimes. These problems may well be one of the reasons why Neotel was keen to invest in a national fibre network with Vodacom and MTN.
Neotel & SEACOM network – discussion
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