The City of Joburg (COJ) Broadband Project has promised true smart city status to the city after it goes live on 1 July, but residents can look forward to additional benefits.
BWired, the company that will operate the project for 12 years, says the network will be integrated into the city's systems and processes, boosting economic growth, enhancing the public service offering through e-government, providing added capacity and efficiencies for private enterprises, and offering social benefits through e-learning.
"Residents will experience further roll-out of smart metering, the introduction of intelligent traffic management, and improved public safety and e-health so that residents can enjoy the benefits of living in a smart city," says BWired spokesperson Masechaba Dlengezele. "It will stimulate opportunities for the business sector, create more small to medium enterprises, bring business and people together, and increase employment opportunities."
The fibre-optic network was designed by Ericsson SA and covers all seven regions of the COJ municipality. According to Dlengezele, it marks one of the biggest rollouts of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere in terms of its 1.2Tb core capacity and 940km coverage.
Earlier this year, BWired executive director Musa Nkosi revealed the speeds that the network will provide are well in excess of anything seen in SA at the moment. "Businesses will be able to get well in excess of 1Gbps, with residential users likely to be able to connect at up to 100Mbps. The fastest broadband access speeds in SA at the moment are in the region of 10Mbps, which is expected to reach 20Mbps to 30Mbps with the launch of LTE," said Nkosi.
According to a statement released by BWired earlier this week, the COJ will only use a small percentage of the projected network capacity, meaning other telecoms service providers, and industry at large can plug into the remaining capacity on a wholesale and open access basis.
Dlengezele was, however, unable to speculate on the costs to plug into the network. "Costs will be determined business case by business case, based on the unique requirements of the customer," she said.
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