Neotel cable heads across country

Neotel could be putting itself under pressure by promising to build a 600km fibre-optic network by the end of the year.
This week, the second network operator said it would complete the first leg of its long-haul fibre optic network between Durban and Johannesburg in less than six months.While Neotel continues to withhold subscriber numbers, the company feels it is eating into Telkom’s market share.Imraan Abbas, head of business support services, said trenching had begun and laying of cables would hit full steam in August. “We should be able to lay 10km of fibre each day,” said Abbas.The 570km first leg will be from the Neotel’s Midrand point of presence (POP) to a Durban switch. The Durban switch is already connected to Seacom’s Mtunzini landing station 120km away in the northwest of KwaZulu-Natal.

In January Neotel announced it would partner with MTN to build a 5000km national network linking major urban centres with the new Seacom submarine cable system.In May, Seacom began point-to-point testing between its landing stations, including Mtunzini.Seacom, a fibre-optic cable system running along the ocean floor, covers Africa’s eastern coast, landing in five countries — SA, Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique and Egypt — and connecting the continent with Europe and Asia via high- speed, high-bandwidth data.Abbas said the deadline for completion of the first leg of the national network was just before the Fifa World Cup next June, but he was optimistic it would be done by December.

The company already has 2000- 3000km of fibre in metro areas of Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town, via R800-million worth of cables.On the long-haul network, it expects to spend R2-billion on cabling alone — a cost it will share with MTN and Vodacom. Transmission equipment will bring the cost of the project to R2.5-billion.Research firm Frost & Sullivan said wholesale prices for bandwidth would drop from R3500- R11000 per megabit per second (Mbps) per month to as low as R267 per Mbps per month when Seacom launches its service to compete with the Telkom-dominated SAT-3 west coast cable.

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