Telkom 40Mbps VDSL pilot timeline and locations revealed

Telkom has chosen 53 sites for roll-out of its new multi-service access nodes (MSANs) which it will use to trial high speed digital subscriber line (DSL) services. Telkom aims to launch a trial within the second half of 2012.

The executive in charge of Telkom’s network transformation project, Andrew Heuvel, said that the 53 sites are spread across four regions as follows:

• Gauteng Central: 33
• Telkom NER region: 13
• Western Cape: 4
• Durban: 3

Street distributions cabinets will be erected at each of the sites, and Telkom went on to list the five exchange areas these will fall under:

• Durban North
• Benmore Gardens
• Fourways
• Waterkloof
• Durbanville

Alphonzo Samuels, managing executive for network infrastructure provisioning at Telkom

Alphonzo Samuels, head of network infrastructure provisioning at Telkom, explained that they want to be ready to kick off the pilot project in July 2012.

Presuming the vendors and contractors involved meet Telkom’s requirements, technical testing will then run for a period of 3–6 months.

The new MSANs will allow Telkom to roll out ADSL2+, VDSL2, and fibre-to-the-premises to customers within the trial areas.

All three technologies won’t necessarily be available in all areas, and Telkom’s head of wholesale and networks, Bashier Sallie, said that particularly FTTx would only be rolled out where it made business sense.

Bashier Sallie

In official Telkom correspondence, the telecommunications service provider said that only a very small number of the total broadband customers will form part of this technical testing.

“Accordingly, due to the need to control the testing environment, the sample will be limited to the Telkom ISP customers,” Telkom said. “Such customers will accordingly be informed that Telkom reserves the right to reset all customers back to their original service profiles after the technical testing has been completed.”

Beyond the trial, Sallie said that Telkom will be replacing all 2,700 of its old DSL access multiplexers (DSLAMs) and digital loop carriers (DLCs), while adding 1,000 new MSAN nodes.

Asked about how long the whole roll-out would take, Sallie said that they want to reach a critical mass of nodes in 3 years, and finish the roll-out in 5 years.

Sallie said that the pace and depth is “very questionable at this stage,” so Telkom wouldn’t be disclosing the cost of the upgrades.

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