Fibre16.11.2023

MetroFibre rolling out first-of-its-kind 100km South African business fibre network

MetroFibre is set to complete the rollout of a 100km fibre network ring for businesses in Cape Town by the end of November 2023.

MetroFibre wholesale head Gary Webster said the rollout stems from massive connectivity demand by businesses locating their operations in the City of Cape Town, including multinationals, financial services providers, insurers, contact centres, cloud and technology providers, and manufacturers.

“Cape Town is also increasingly the home base of choice of the global hyper-scaler cloud providers which are expanding their presence in the region,” Webster said.

In the first phase of its business network rollout, around 4,000 businesses will get access to the MetroFibre network.

These include offices in the main business hubs of Montagu Gardens, Brackenfell, Rondebosch, Paarden Island, Stikland, Epping, Belville, Tyger Valley and the City Bowl.

Webster said MetroFibre’s globally compliant Carrier Ethernet 3.0 network, the first of its kind in South Africa, delivered on the most stringent of service level agreements (SLAs), with high resiliency and ultra-low latency.

The operator said this open-access fibre network improves access, scalability and reliability for clients, and connects over 60 cloud, application, voice and Internet service providers with their customers.

“Through strategic partnerships and relationships with Teraco, MetroFibre can also directly link customers to the world’s unrivalled cloud operators such as Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google,” MetroFibre said.

Cape Town aerial view

Not shared with other FNOs

Webster explained a big differentiator with MetroFibre’s network in Cape Town is that it did not share its routes with any other fibre network operators (FNOs).

“This provides much greater reliability and resiliency as it means our network is not subject to potential disruptions experienced by other FNOs working on the same route.”

“When potential downtime is not just an inconvenience, but potentially catastrophic for your business, a redundant fibre connectivity solution is key,” Webster said.

Webster said the MetroFibre’s SLAs were ideally designed for business needs, whereas most current fibre deployments in Cape Town were GPON-based and not suited to the needs of large commercial operations.

“All MetroFibre points-of-presence are also set up to handle load shedding beyond stage 8,” he added.


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