Telkom downplays bandwidth fears

By Nicola Mawson for Telkom
Johannesburg, 01 Mar 2007

While SA's largest fixed-line provider will not say exactly how much bandwidth it has access to, it has assured it can meet the country's needs going forward. However, market commentators are not so sure.

Analysts previously indicated the country could require anywhere between one and two terabits of capacity by the time SA hosts the soccer World Cup.

Wally Beelders, Telkom's chief sales and marketing officer, would not disclose how much capacity is available locally. He says the operator is continuously upgrading its bandwidth capabilities and "there is no reason why the South African market cannot secure all of its capacity from Telkom".

Beelders adds the company "continuously evaluates the capacity demands of the South African market and executes plans... to ensure sufficient capacity is available in the marketplace at any given point in time".

Fully aware

The telecommunications company says these plans include upgrades of existing cables and new cables. "We are aware of the 2010 requirements and will have access to four submarine cables... for the provision of services for the World Cup."

These cables, it says, are South Atlantic 2 (SAT-2), South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3), the eastern South Africa Far East (Safe) and the East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy). Recently renamed the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network, Eassy has yet to get off the ground.

Beelders says while Telkom does not have full and sole ownership of the SAT-3 cable, it is possible to source capacity from any of the other 35 capacity owners on the SAT-3 cable.

Arthur Goldstuck, MD of World Wide Worx, says the total capacity of the SAT-3, Safe and Eassy cables is about 890Mbps. Gartner analyst William Hahn says SAT-2, commissioned over 10 years ago, has a "whopping" capacity of 560Mbps.

Insufficient capacity

Storm's business development director Dave Gale says there is not enough capacity on the SAT-3 cable to cater for SA's 2010 needs. He adds that if the country is to meet requirements, other cables in the planning stage must be kicked off this year.

For the 2006 event, held in Germany, broadcasting alone accounted for 480GB of data each second. Goldstuck, who previously said SA could need as much as two terabits by the time the World Cup rolls around in 2010, has rebuked Telkom for being unwilling to provide statistics.

He likened Telkom's stance to the days when it fell under the Department of Posts and Telecommunications. "The attitude was that big brother knows best; the less you know the better for you; and the more we can control your activity, the better for us and you.

"I can see local bandwidth being throttled for 2010," Goldstuck has said.

The international broadcast centre in Munich had 25 cameras running for four weeks, transmitting images through 24 fibre optic lines provided by Deutsche Telekom. The converged network Avaya built for Fifa handled over 21 trillion bytes of voice and data traffic.

Stifling competition

BMI-TechKnowledge senior telecoms analyst Richard Hurst argues that if SA could source all its international bandwidth on SAT-3 from Telkom, this could stifle competition. "I think the issue is the market needs a transparent and equitable access to the SAT-3 cable if we are to start unleashing the next wave of potential in the local telecoms market."

Rob Lith, who heads up Connection Telecom, points out SAT-2 was installed in 1992 as a predecessor to the SAT-3 undersea cable. SAT-2 can handle 15 360 simultaneous transmissions in several different forms, including voice, television and data transfer.

"This infrastructure was expected to cater for SA's telecoms requirements for the next 20 years. However, demand escalated to the point where SAT-2 become fully utilised before the SAT-3 cable was ready for service in the first quarter of 2002," Lith says.

Fifa previously expressed concerns that SA may not be up to the challenge of meeting IT infrastructure needs. The governing body is reported as saying, while it seeks to reuse much of the technology infrastructure from Germany, SA's lack of bandwidth may hamper running of the event.