iBurst plans to take on Telkom
Speaking at the ISPA iWeek conference in Johannesburg, Antony McKechnie, Head of Product Development at iBurst SA, said that iBurst is planning various new services, including a fully fledged voice offering, Metronet services and WiMax offerings.
McKechnie said that iBurst will launch its iCall v2 offering before the end of the year. While iBurst’s current iCall service allows users to make outbound calls, iCall v2 will allow subscribers to receive incoming calls on a 087 number.
This service will directly compete against Telkom’s voice offerings, similar to other VANS VoIP offerings like Vox Telecom’s service and MWEB’s Broadband Talk.
iBurst will also launch the ‘iBurst Phone’ – integrating a fully functional sip phone and an iBurst modem into a single device.
iBurst is also planning to launch its Metronet services, a 15 GHz microwave based solution offering speeds between 5 Mbps and 155 Mbps which will compete directly against current leased line offerings.
The Metronet offerings will typically offer clients point-to-point connectivity, using iBurst’s backhaul network, with full quality of service and service level agreements in place. According to McKechnie the company is currently trialing its Metronet service.
iBurst is also venturing into the WiMax market and plan offer services using this technology in the near future, something that will most likely be done in conjunction with Vodacom who has a 10% share in the company.
When questioned as to why the company would be investing in a WiMax network when it already has a fully fledged wireless network in the form of iBurst, McKechnie said that they are basically hedging their bets.
McKechnie said that WiMax is an IEEE standard while iBurst, which is not a GSM standard, has only a single supplier, namely Kyocera. WiMax further supplies quality-of-service on the access level, something which iBurst is not capable of offering.
McKechnie however said that they have yet to see how good the WiMax technology actually is, but that if the technology does turn out to deliver on the illustrious promises made by vendors, it will be beneficial for the company to be able to migrate their customers to this technology from their current iBurst network.
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