Telkom upgrading broadband speed and infrastructure
The infrastructure needed to offer high-speed DSL and fibre-to-the-premises services is being deployed by Telkom.
Telkom has begun rolling out 3,700 multi-service access nodes (MSANs) that will replace 2,700 older generation cabinets and add another 1,000 to their number.
Alphonzo Samuels, managing executive for network infrastructure provisioning, explained that MSANs can be used to offer higher speed ADSL (ADSL 2+), very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL), and fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) services.
These new cabinets can offer speeds of up to 1Gbps using fibre as the last mile, or up to 40Mbps using Telkom’s existing last-mile copper infrastructure, Samuels said. Each cabinet can handle 370 – 600 connections, depending on the ports activated.
Samuels also said that MSANs now installed in Waterkloof Ridge, Pretoria are the first in Africa.
The roll-out forms part of Telkom’s “Network Transformation Initiative”, which they said aims to shorten the local loop to provide higher speed data service over their existing copper lines, and even offer fibre services where it makes sense to do so.
Alphonzo Samuels, managing executive for network infrastructure provisioning at Telkom
Information about Telkom’s plans to trial 20Mbps and 40Mbps DSL services first emerged in July 2011, though fibre-to-the-curb (FTTC) projects have been part of Telkom’s strategy for years.
“It has and continues to be a Telkom strategy to reduce the copper loop length, by taking ‘fibre to the curb’, in the quest to provide higher broadband speeds,” Bashier Sallie, Telkom’s senior managing executive for wholesale and networks previously told MyBroadband.
Sallie added that much of Telkom’s fibre network, which spans over 144,000km, is already ‘to the curb’.
Andrew Heuvel, executive in charge of Telkom’s network transformation project, in front of an open MSAN
Would you like content with your data?
Originally known as the Delta Partners Project, Telkom’s infrastructure refresh included content plans such as video-on-demand (VOD) to residential customers.
Details around this also started to emerge recently when Samsung revealed that it had partnered with Telkom to offer fixed-line broadband with Samsung Smart TVs.
Samsung SA’s business leader of consumer electronics, Matthew Thackrah told MyBroadband that they were in negotiations with various telcos to offer packages with large data caps – 20 or 30GB – with their TVs.
Larger data caps and high broadband speeds are required before VOD will be feasible in SA, Thackrah explained.
Telkom MSAN installation
Related articles
More Telkom 40Mbps VDSL trial details revealed (25 March 2012)
Large data packages to be bundled with Samsung TVs (23 March 2012)
20Mbps ADSL network upgrades starting? (28 August 2011)
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