Tag: fibre connectivity

South Africa's connectivity landscape tells a tale of two realities. In affluent suburbs, gigabit fibre connections are becoming commonplace. These enable seamless remote work, streaming and digital entrepreneurship. Meanwhile, in townships and informal settlements, home to millions of South Africans, residents struggle with expensive and unreliable mobile data as their primary internet access.

The marriage of global expertise with local know-how cannot be overstated.  This is particularly true in the case of hyperscaler marketplace in Africa, which has enjoyed some tremendous growth in recent years. In South Africa, global cloud service providers (CSPs) like Microsoft, IBM, AWS, Oracle have expanded their cloud data centres which, in turn, has bolstered the hyperscaler market.

The satellite industry is rapidly expanding, and we are starting to see the growth of new industry sectors and the implementation of new applications. With global Low Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations such as OneWeb driving the development of the African market and Starlink announcing services in selected African countries, both awareness of, and demand for, satellite connectivity services are growing.

Having served its purpose in ushering high-speed internet access in South Africa, Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) has now reached the end of its life. The technology is outdated and, typical of copper-based commodities, is susceptible to the vagaries of copper theft.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been a hot topic for a number of years, but the pervasive and affordable connectivity required for successful deployment has held back its progress. This is rapidly changing, with the rollout of fibre to the home, 5G and even Elon Musk’s recently launched Starlink satellite.

Let’s face it, things have changed for business. They are not going to go back to the way they were. And we need new ways to manage the 'new normal', fast. Take for instance your office PABX system: A PABX (or PBX) is a company switchboard, that allows everyone in the company to make and receive calls from the same number(s), and transfer calls between each other. Sounds simple enough, right?

Internet access has come a long way from the R28,000 it cost for a 256kbps connection in 1995. Even prior to the lockdown, almost 500,000 homes and more than 114,000 business premises were connected to fibre according to FTTX Council research from the end of June 2019. Of course, having high-speed access does not necessarily solve all problems.

At the core of our work and social lives, connectivity and online functions like email, e-commerce, apps, and instant messaging, seem to dominate everything we do in the modern world. Made even more apparent by the lockdown and its restrictions, few businesses can trade effectively without connectivity, and a reliable data network has become a must-have for all businesses, regardless of size or sector.

With most of the world shut down to varying degrees in response to the global coronavirus pandemic, the importance of connectivity has been magnified. Without reliable connectivity, a country is doomed to languish on the wrong side of the digital divide.

In the past two decades or so, numerous projects were successfully completed where VSAT connectivity was required in remote locations such as mines, construction sites, lodges, as well as underserved Point of Sale locations, to name but a few. However, there has always been one common thread: What to do with the end-user access to the satellite network?