Seacom’s arrival to result in networking boom

6 October 2009

With the completion of the Seacom undersea cable and the accompanying increase in bandwidth available to the South African market, the local networking, communications and collaboration space is poised to boom.

That’s because, says Marius Vermeulen, Cisco product manager at Tarsus Technologies, many of the most innovative and cost-saving networking technologies available in other parts of the world can quite simply not be accommodated on current South African broadband connections.

“Telepresence – a Cisco technology that creates an extremely lifelike video-conferencing solution – is just one example of functionality that companies could use to save themselves a fortune annually.

“Unfortunately, however, today there’s still insufficient bandwidth available in South Africa to support this solution,” Vermeulen explains.

“Larger organisations in the US and Europe take for granted their ability to replicate data at an offsite facility in real-time, using existing fibre-optic infrastructure laid many years ago by forward thinking telcos in their region.

“It is anticipated that with Seacom arrival South African telcos will be spurred on to install similar infrastructure, which will be used to both connect new users to the Internet and provide organisations with the ability to cost-effectively connect their branch office network together, or to stage a business continuity facility offsite in case disaster strikes,” he says.

Importantly, Vermeulen notes, the way access to Seacom is being handled is important.

“Unlike other cable systems which allow access to a limited number of players, in essence perpetuating the monopolistic behavior we’ve seen in South Africa up until now, Seacom will be a great deal more open,” he adds.

“From the looks of things, the cable is set to become somewhat of an equalising force in the market,” Vermeulen opines, “and one that will set the tone for future cable projects due to hit the country in the next two to three years.”

Vermeulen says that popular belief is that the country will see more than a hundred-fold increase in international bandwidth in the next four years.

“And obviously this bodes well for the average Internet experience in South Africa and for the uptake of connectivity. “

And as the Internet grows locally, so will the local networking market – it’s going to be a good place to focus one’s business in the coming months,” he concludes.