Network triumph for SITA

By Damaria Senne for SITA
Johannesburg, 05 Feb 2008

The State IT Agency (SITA) has successfully deployed government's R454 million next-generation network (NGN) on schedule and within budget, it says.

The roll-out of the NGN, billed as the largest public sector network in sub-Saharan Africa, started in May 2007, in partnership with Neotel and Business Connexion (BCX). It replaces government's common core network, which was first deployed in 2003.

Speaking at a media briefing, in Johannesburg this morning, minister of public service and administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi said the NGN was implemented last October as planned. The migration of government departments was concluded in January 2008.

Migration of government employees from the core network was virtually seamless, ensuring government continues to function without interruption, she said. This is unlike recent government IT projects like eNatis, which experienced severe problems at launch.

Fraser-Moleketi noted that too often IT project results are disappointing with budgets allowed to escalate because some issues were not taken into account.

The seamless delivery of the NGN speaks volumes about the competency of all parties involved in the project and validates SITA's decision to appoint the service providers, she said.

Neotel provided national backbone transmission services to support the NGN, connecting SITA's key sites in major cities and towns across SA with about 700Mbps of transmission bandwidth. The second national operator's contract was worth R378 million.

BCX supplied, installed and will support the network equipment on the NGN for the next three years. Its portion of the contract was worth R76 million.

Next step

SITA CEO Llewellyn Jones said government is already looking to develop converged services using the high-capacity NGN network.

The agency is rolling out a set of converged communication services for Parliament, in Cape Town, enabling the government officials to access new communication services when Parliament resumes this week, he said.

This is only the first step, as SITA will provide services in other government departments, Jones said.

Jones said Neotel's successful deployment of the NGN is indicative that there is competition in the South African ICT sector.

SITA will continue to use the services of Telkom and Neotel, as well as any other telecoms provider coming into this country, he said. "We are glad to see competition in the sector."

Neotel MD Ajay Pandey said the milestone of building the largest public sector NGN has given his company confidence to take bolder steps in the future. "You will see more of us in making a difference in communications."