SEACOM on Monday held a technical demonstration of its new network, a 5×100 Gbps service (totaling 500Gbps) and South African backhaul upgrade at the Teraco datacenter in Isando, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Suveer Ramdhani, SEACOM Head of Product Strategy said the latest SEACOM project is a global first. Once live, it will offer 5×100 Gbps (gigabits per second) transmission of data on a single wavelength in Africa.
Suveer also highlighted SEACOM’s commitment to the African ICT market and cited the company’s past achievements including:
-building the first submarine cable on the East coast of Africa,
-providing the first privately owned submarine cable to land in Africa,
-the first to launch an open access providing POP (point of presence) to POP capacity and
-the first to launch an IP (internet protocol) network in Africa’s east coast.
“The introduction of a second truly open access POP requires the two POPs to be interconnected for network protection and overhaul. A project of this nature requires the participation of several suppliers and partners.
“We are most proud of SEACOM’s team of local engineers for delivering this project,” says Suveer.
“All staff working on the project with SEACOM were African engineers.”
Bruce Wallace SKA Site Bid Manager and Specialist, when asked for comment said the network was a landmark achievement for both South Africa and Africa, and signals to the international science research and development community that global projects such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope, which South Africa and Australia are shortlisted to host, and and SEACOM’s 500Gbps network, demonstrate South Africa’s ability to deliver world class, complex and high tech projects on time.
What does 5x100Gbps mean to the user?
Suveer says the 5×100 Gbps capacity was built to offer additional supply and a more reliable network. The additional supply of capacity will also reduce the cost of access for the consumer.
There’s a great demand for data consumption that requires enormous scale of capacity to deliver services using a reliable network.
“As we move to more cloud based services, SEACOM as a wholesaler must meet the inevitable need for 100Gbe (Ethernet) services between key network points such as large datacentres.
“There’s a high demand for new services by tech savvy customers and SEACOM is evolving to stay ahead.” Suveer concludes
Words … words … words! What is this going to mean to me and other victims of empty promises? Telkom delivery barely reaches 170 kilobits per second, while I am paying MWeb for 384! AND Telkom’s considers this travesty ‘normal’ when you report ‘slow service’ (Ref 481CTK010811)!! ‘Misrepresentations’ from both MWeb and Telkom in my case going on for years now, both blaming the other in turn!!!
South Africans need bandwidth – SEACOM shows us the way.
LONG LIVE PRIVATE ENTERPRISE !
Let us be grateful that some South Africans can provide very useful services
to their fellow countrymen. They used a secret ingredient, not very popular
to many others (hard work)
I smell a Gupta!
that is interesting, now we be paying less 4 faster n reliable data services (internet).
I pay a fortune every month for so called “Fastest” internet service and it still took 23 seconds to download this pathetic story. Lots of hype and no delivery, don’t count on seeing improvement anytime soon! By the time fiber optic reaches my door in Cape Town the rest of the world will be communicating telepathicly!