South Africa: Telkom network revamp to ‘bring broadband home’
29 March 2012
Creamer Media's Engineering News - March
Telecommunications group Telkom on Wednesday embarked on its last, and most challenging, step of its network transformation project.
The company installed Africa’s first multi service access node (Msan) unit in Waterkloof, Pretoria, starting its three- to five-year focus on “bringing broadband home”, Telkom managing executive for wholesale and networks Alphonzo Samuels said.
Telkom started a nationwide network transformation last year, which aimed to achieve an all-Internet protocol network designed to enable fixed-mobile convergence and differentiated high-speed broadband, as well as the optimisation of its copper-based access network.
“We have gone a long way in revamping our aggregation network, which is now able to support super-fast transmission and enable a superior browsing experience. We have also transformed our transmission network, which has evolved from carrying Gb/s to Tb/s throughput with great resilience and manageability,” said Telkom MD for wholesale and network Bashier Sallie.
The revamping of the group’s access network was the final segment of the project.
The access network was based on fibre-to-the-x (FTTx) to ensure commercial and service sustainability, and was supported by more than 143 000 km of Telkom fibre across the country. FTTx broadband architecture was Telkom’s chosen path and best suited to South Africa, the company pointed out.
The company was hoping to achieve 3 700 points of presence across South Africa with the addition of the Msan units. The first phase of Msan would be ready for commercial service in the second half of the year.
Category: ICT