{"id":16477,"date":"2010-11-10T14:42:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T12:42:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2012-09-03T16:35:26","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T14:35:26","slug":"fibreco-all-the-details","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/16477-fibreco-all-the-details.html","title":{"rendered":"FibreCo: All the details"},"content":{"rendered":"

FibreCo Telecommunications (aka FibreCo<\/strong><\/a>), a partnership between Cell C, Internet Solutions and Convergence Partners, announced recently that it will be developing an open-access long-haul terrestrial fibre optic broadband network as an answer to the need for national transmission infrastructure to meet the nation\u2019s aspirations for world-class broadband connectivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cFibreCo brings the ability to fund, deploy and manage a cost-effective high speed long-haul fibre network which will support the explosive growth in bandwidth requirements of the country anticipated over the coming years,\u201d the company said in a press statement.<\/p>\n

This new network will compete directly against Telkom, Broadband Infraco and Neotel\/MTN\/Vodacom who are also constructing a national fibre network.<\/p>\n

Telkom and Broadband Infraco have existing national fibre networks whilst the Neotel\/MTN\/Vodacom construction is progressing well despite some challenges with approvals from local authorities to roll out this network.<\/p>\n

According to Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys<\/a> the first leg of the Neotel\/MTN\/Vodacom national fibre network, which stretches from Johannesburg to Durban, is very close to completion and is only held up by local authorities who are very slow in granting permission for wayleaves.<\/p>\n

Construction of the second leg – which will connect Johannesburg and Cape Town – has also started and is progressing well, said Uys.<\/p>\n

FibreCo enters the fray<\/strong><\/p>\n

With three players set to have fully operational national fibre networks soon, there may be some questions as to whether there is a need for another player in the long-haul fibre network market.<\/p>\n

FibreCo feels strongly that their presence will add value to the local telecoms and broadband market, especially in the way in which it is approaching this project.<\/p>\n

\u201cFibreCo\u2019s objective is to completely transform the dynamics of SA\u2019s broadband sector by building and managing a long-haul national fibre-optic transmission network on an open-access model,\u201d said Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt.<\/p>\n

Andile Ngcaba, Chairman of Convergence Partners, concurs with Reichelt, pointing out that whilst the cost of international transmission has dropped significantly since 2009 with the arrival of new undersea fibre networks, national transmission in South Africa still accounts for a very significant proportion of telecommunications costs to end users and constitutes a critical bottleneck to ordinary citizens and businesses.<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough its open-access pricing model, FibreCo will effectively transfer the significant economies of scale inherent in fibre-optic networking technologies to its customers, paving the way for lower broadband access costs for end users, improvements in communications service quality and innovation, and enhanced regional connectivity,\u201d said Ngcaba.<\/p>\n

FibreCo CEO Arif Hussain<\/a> told MyBroadband that \u201copen-access\u201d means that they will offer all customers the same price depending on the volumes the purchase. He likened their model to that of SEACOM where pricing isn’t determined by a telco’s shareholding in the cable.<\/p>\n

When asked whether the pricing would be made public, such as listing the basic cost structure on their website, Hussain said that it was too early to say right now.<\/p>\n

Hussain conceded that when one considers the current demand it would seem that more than enough infrastructure is available. However, when one looks to the future, the picture changes. He said that within the next three to five years there will be a much higher demand for not only capacity, but redundancy as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat’ll add value to all operators at the end of the day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

FibreCo\u2019s plans<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hussain said that construction of the FibreCo network will follow a three-phase approach and will ultimately cover a total distance in excess of 12,000km.<\/p>\n

The initial phase will focus on rolling out a 4,500km redundant core ring linking Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban to international cable landing stations within two years.<\/p>\n

According to Hussain they will consider putting down additional points of presence (POPs) at other urban centres along the routes such as Bloemfontein and Port Elizabeth, depending on customer demand.<\/p>\n

FibreCo will build where they need to build but is in favour of infrastructure sharing, said Hussain. \u201cWe’re not hell-bent on building for the sake of building,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hussain said that they also don’t intend to build networks into the metros themselves.<\/p>\n

Cell C\u2019s national wireless network will provide the platform for the co-location of optical transmission equipment at their base stations as well as wireless access solutions for FibreCo\u2019s customers, Hussein explained.<\/p>\n

Cell C would also be an \u201canchor tenant\u201d of sorts on the FibreCo infrastructure, he added.<\/p>\n

FibreCo has a similar arrangement through Internet Solutions, Hussein explained.<\/p>\n

IS will host the optical termination equipment of FibreCo’s customers in urban centres as well as provide \u201cvalue-added networking solutions into the enterprise market.\u201d<\/p>\n

Different from the competition<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hussein said that FibreCo isn’t setting out to directly compete with or undercut existing national bandwidth providers like Telkom, Broadband Infraco, Neotel, MTN and Vodacom.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re not setting out to compete with existing players, we’re offering something completely different,\u201d Hussein said.<\/p>\n

According to Hussein they are offering what they call \u201cmanaged fibre,\u201d which will allow customers to build their own fibre networks. He said that currently you only get dark fibre (which is typically not a long haul network) and managed bandwidth products from players like Neotel and Broadband Infraco.<\/p>\n

“We’re offering more choice rather than offering the same product at a lower price,” said Hussain.<\/p>\n

Hussain said that it was too early to reveal much about the planned capacity of the network or technology they would use, but did divulge that they plan on supporting equipment from multiple vendors.<\/p>\n

He added that they would be selling the physical fibre pairs on the network and not wavelengths or bandwidth, so the amount of capacity available is effectively up to their customers.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately Hussein was unable to go into the detail of how many fibre pairs they plan on having available on the network, but said that typically such national long haul networks are designed to have a huge amount of spare capacity.<\/p>\n

Since customers will be buying raw fibre from FibreCo they will be responsible for their own peering agreements, Hussain explained. However, they don’t intend to connect their network to internet exchanges, but rather want to focus on open data centres such as those from Teraco.<\/p>\n

According to Hussein, customer demand might allow them to connect to internet exchanges where peering occurs, but most customers handle their own connectivity to those peering points.<\/p>\n

Effect on the end user<\/strong><\/p>\n

Increased national transmission capacity will result in lower end-user costs, said Hussain. He added that this will have a knock-on effect on the demand of international bandwidth as well.<\/p>\n

Hussain declined to hazard a guess at the amount bandwidth prices will reduce, but said that their launch will certainly cause a decline in the cost of bandwidth (and hence the cost of data usage).<\/p>\n

Regardless of the exact level of cost savings, Hussain believes that users will get a lot more value for their money thanks to the greater redundancy of networks.<\/p>\n

FibreCo: All the details<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FibreCo Telecommunications announced that they will take on Telkom, Broadband Infraco and Neotel\/MTN\/Vodacom with a new fibre network. Here are the details.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16477"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}