Bandwidth speedway
THE RACE TO PROVIDE the next generation of enterprise telecommunications solutions is on, with Telkom, Neotel, Vodacom and MTN all looking to get a slice of the pie.
The key to that is something most urban South Africans have been experiencing over the past few months – pavements and roads in major business districts being dug up over and over again.
That’s all in the name of laying a substantial amount of fibre optic cable past the offices of as many as possible South Africa’s top 200 companies.
Neotel chief technical officer Angus Hey says Neotel’s backbone network has been in place for some time and it’s currently rolling out its access network. Neotel’s network already extends throughout SA, with one of its new clients being the State IT Agency, with Neotel linking 25 locations countrywide.
The main service that many corporates are being targeted with is the Metro Ethernet service. That technology – being offered by all the main players – allows companies to connect facilities in the same city via very high-speed links.
Hey says, historically, there’s been a lot of technology sitting between various networks that companies were running. They’ll have to connect their local area networks (LANS) to whatever system they’ve bought from Telkom at each facility. However, those Telkom links would be running at a slower speed than the LANS.
Because the basics of the Metro Ethernet and the Ethernet that runs corporate LANS is the same core technology, it’s possible to treat the different locations as if they were a single physical network.
Arnold van Huyssteen, product management executive for business markets at Telkom, says the benefits of Metro Ethernet – which Telkom sells under its MetroLan product – is the ability to define the various qualities of service across the network. That enables clients to allocate bandwidth to different applications depending on their needs.
Voice services, which are very latency dependent, would need a quality of service that would ensure conversations being transmitted across a network arrive with very little lag. Mission critical applications are still sensitive to delays but not to the same extent as voice, so they can be run with a quality of service that’s not as focused on real time delivery.
However, some applications, such as email and web browsing, can benefit from the speed that those services offer but only really need a “best effort” delivery of data. Van Huyssteen says that can actually provide a better level of service than users get when they’re on their local network.
Metro Ethernet services currently run on fibre rings, connecting locations within the same area. In Telkom’s case it’s initially Johannesburg, Pretoria, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Polekwane. Hey says one of the benefits of the high speeds those services provide – Neotel offers up to 1Gbps on its service – is to allow companies to run proper disaster recovery systems. With the bandwidth available it’s possible to create back-up infrastructure that can run in step with each other.
Wally Beelders, executive director at Vodacom Business, says corporate needs in the telecoms sector are focused on providing access to the global economy, as well as using communications as an enabler to save time and increase efficiencies. “Communication is no longer perceived as just a cost or tool but as a primary enabler and differentiator,” says Beelders.
However, he identifies bandwidth limitations – especially the availability of adequate international bandwidth – as a major challenge facing the industry. He adds the main beneficiary of increased competition in the telecoms market will be the consumer through reduced pricing and improved services.
Finweek
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