New 10Gbps Gauteng-Cape Town fibre for EOH

EOH Network Solutions said in a press release on Tuesday, 18 March 2014 that it has established one of the first 10 Gigabit per second (Gbps) services to go live over the recently deployed FibreCo network between Gauteng and Cape Town.

According to EOH, the FibreCo fibre project has been highly anticipated over the last 18 months due to the expectation that it would bring much needed competition on national long haul telecommunications infrastructure and, as a result, lower cost.

However, while this additional capacity will support new initiatives, EOH said it will not replace the company’s current national services on Telkom.

“Telkom’s national fibre network, for me, still represents the highest level of quality and engineering available on national routes in South Africa,” said Stuart Hardy, business unit manager of EOH’s Networks Division.

“While it comes at a premium, it allows us to feel confident around national service delivery,” Hardy continued. “Because FibreCo is so new, we are cautiously optimistic on how we incorporate this product into our network,” he said.

Hardy said that there are several initiatives where this 10Gbps capacity will be used, which will support other important strategies within the group.

“We are planning to use this additional capacity to drive some of our products in the market, including national replication between data centres, cloud service delivery to Cape Town, and national backhaul of SAT 3 capacity,” Hardy said.

“Some of our larger enterprise clients will be extending their LANs using [virtual private LAN service] (VPLS) between JHB and Cape Town at STM1 level (155Mbps),” he said

Hardy said that providing L2 or VPLS services over this link for enterprise can considerably reduce the cost of national transit in comparison to Multiprotocol Label Switching.

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