{"id":551101,"date":"2006-12-15T06:42:18","date_gmt":"2006-12-15T06:42:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/551101-a-faster-ride.html"},"modified":"2006-12-15T06:42:18","modified_gmt":"2006-12-15T06:42:18","slug":"a-faster-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/551101-a-faster-ride.html","title":{"rendered":"A faster ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pavements in SA cities have begun to look like building sites as workmen, shovels in hand, dig long trenches. It has nothing to do with the Gautrain project. Rather, the workmen are contracted to Telkom to replace the company\u2019s ageing copper-based infrastructure with fibre-optic cables. <\/font><\/p>\n

With competition looming it\u2019s a do-or-die project for Telkom. The company\u2019s goal is to shorten the length of the local loop \u2014 the copper cables that link consumers to its network \u2014 so it can provide much faster broadband access into consumers\u2019 homes. <\/font><\/p>\n

The ADSL technology that Telkom uses to deliver broadband over copper is limited by the distance between consumers\u2019 premises and their nearest telephone exchange. The nearer people are to the company\u2019s fibre network, the faster the connections that can be delivered to them. <\/font><\/p>\n

Without these fast connections, Telkom\u2019s plans to deliver television over its broadband network \u2014 thereby broadening its revenue sources as pressure builds on its core voice business \u2014 will come to nought. <\/font><\/p>\n

The project must also be seen against the backdrop of looming competition. Neotel plans to launch its first services to residential consumers in the second quarter of 2007 and cellphone providers MTN and Vodacom are soon expected to deploy a 3G technology called HSUPA, which will allow for the superfast upload and download of data. <\/font><\/p>\n

Responding to the wireless threat, Telkom is pushing ahead with plans for a wireless broadband network of its own next year. Testing is almost complete but it must still decide how it will charge for the service. The network, based on WiMax, will initially be built in SA\u2019s urban areas \u2014 in many of the same areas where ADSL is already available. Telkom hopes to use WiMax to compete more effectively with iBurst, a wireless broadband provider that has signed up more than 30000 customers. <\/font><\/p>\n

However, the company would do well not to lose focus on its fixed-line network. Industry pundits, speaking last week at a telecommunications confab in Hong Kong, suggested that fixed-line operators that don\u2019t begin installing fibre directly into people\u2019s homes \u2014 rather just simply shortening local loop lengths, as Telkom is doing \u2014 could find themselves in trouble as demand for high definition television (HDTV) and other broadband-intensive services exceed the physical capabilities of copper cable. <\/font><\/p>\n

But Telkom chief technical officer Thami Msimango says fibre to the home doesn\u2019t make sense in SA. In places such as Hong Kong and Korea, where people live in high rise apartment blocks, it\u2019s easier and cheaper to deploy fibre, he says. It is more economical, not to mention practical, to lay fibre to street distribution cabinets (the green and blue boxes dotted around SA\u2019s neighbourhoods) and to use the existing copper infrastructure to provide access over the last couple of hundred metres into people\u2019s homes. <\/font><\/p>\n

One of Telkom\u2019s next big projects is deploying a faster version of ADSL known as ADSL2+, which theoretically allows download speeds of up to 24Mbit\/s. Msimango expects speeds of about 8-10Mbit\/s, twice as fast as Telkom\u2019s fastest current ADSL offering. The company hopes to make the technology available in the first half of next year. <\/font><\/p>\n

ADSL2+ is well-suited to delivering television over broadband (known as IPTV). Telkom wants to deliver both standard-definition and high-definition IPTV to SA consumers. The latter is particularly bandwidth hungry \u2014 HDTV requires 8-20Mbit\/s of bandwidth.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Discuss this article<\/a> <\/p>\n

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Next year , fixed-line operator Telkom will deploy new technologies, such as ADSL2+, that will provide the sort of high-speed broadband that South Africans until now have only dreamt about. But will it be enough to keep competitors at bay?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"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":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-551101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551101"}],"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\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=551101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}