Neotel punts SEACOM advantages
Neotel today issued a press release saying that “there is light at the end of the formerly narrow bandwidth tunnel.” According to the company SEACOM’s landing will change the local telecoms landscape where businesses and consumers have faced the constraints of a lack of true broadband or bandwidth, as well as very high telecommunication costs.
“The SEACOM bandwidth has now been made available via the Neotel Data Centre in Midrand. The 1.28 Terabits per second, 17 000km submarine fibre cable system links south and east Africa to global networks via India and Europe,” Neotel said.
“During a recent test session with bloggers and journalists, public forums such as Twitter came alive with comments referring to very high download speeds – a luxury South Africans are yet to become accustomed to.”
Earlier this year, Tata Communications announced its increased shareholding in Neotel which effectively made Neotel the only operator in South Africa that is involved in all of the current and planned submarine cable systems confirmed to land in South Africa.
However, this does not include backhaul connectivity. Neotel is providing backhaul from Mtunzini to Johannesburg on its national network thus allowing for capacity to terminate in Johannesburg rather than Mtunzini. This, Neotel says, will have a “tremendous impact on the costs of capacity”.
“Currently the cost of taking capacity from Cape Town to Johannesburg is the same as taking capacity from Cape Town to London,” says Stefano Mattiello, Chief Sales and Customer Service Officer at Neotel. “With this new agreement in place, the capacity will terminate in the Neotel Data Center in Midrand, which means Neotel can make the capacity more readily available to its customers,” he says.
Other service providers will be able to either meet Neotel in its data centre in Midrand to purchase capacity, or Neotel can forward it on to them.
“SEACOM is the first truly competitive submarine fibre cable system landing in South Africa, offering open access to the market. This will most importantly, represent a cost-effective and physically independent alternative to the current SAT-3/SAFE system, and hence offer choice to telecoms providers, as well as improving the overall reliability of South Africa’s connectivity to the world,” said Mattiello.
Neotel pointed out that it will have access and capacity on SAT 3/SAFE which means that it will also gain access to the upgrades being made on SAT 3/SAFE and is able to pass this additional capacity on to the customer.
“SEACOM will add another alternative to the market, and consumers will benefit from the resulting competition,” says Mattiello. “The relationship between Tata Communications and Neotel, and their involvement in all of the international cables, means that we are now able to provide real choice to our customers.”
While SEACOM’s effect is yet to be felt in the local telecoms and broadband market, Neotel promised local businesses and consumers that they will “now have access to a seamless service connecting them to the rest of the world at more affordable rates”.
Neotel & SEACOM discussion
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