Telkom is providing the telecommunications infrastructure to all Independent Electoral Commission (IEC)-controlled election-related points of presence for the municipal elections on 18 May.
The telecoms company says it will enable delivery of ballot results from 20 864 polling stations around the country to the national results centre (NRC), at the Tshwane Show Grounds, via 350 municipal election offices (MEOs), nine provincial results centres (PRCs) and the IEC's headquarters (IEC HQ).
“The elections do not happen only on election day. We have partnered the Electoral Commission in the registration process and the compilation of the voters' roll, which started some time ago, and we continue providing communication services until long after election day is over,” says Godfrey Ntoele, Telkom's managing executive for large and government business services.
Uninterrupted voting
The solution requires access for the IEC's wide area network through Telkom's Virtual Private Network Services (VPNS) platform.
The company adds that its data centre operation, Cybernest, is being used as the IEC's disaster recovery (DR) measure.
“Working as a mirror image of the IEC's head office, all data activities at the IEC HQ are replicated at Telkom's data centre in real-time. In the unlikely event of disaster at the IEC HQ, the DR site will take over all activities and the elections will proceed uninterrupted.”
Telkom says it is also fulfilling the requests of broadcasters and media channels during the election period.
Careful counting
Counting of votes will occur at the MEOs. The count data is, thereafter, scanned and transferred electronically to the PRC, where data for all the MEOs in the applicable province is collated, figures consolidated and then transferred electronically to the IEC headquarters and simultaneously to the DR site for final collation and consolidation.
Telkom says, at almost every stage of the vote counting process, the data is transferred to and presented in real-time at the NRC.
It adds that 20 MEOs are connected to the applicable PRC via VSAT technology and 330 MEOs are connected via Telkom's VPNS platform. These sites have been updated to a minimum speed of 1Mbps.
Basic rate interfaces (BRIs), ADSL and analogue telephone lines have been installed.
There is one PRC in each province and each one has two high-speed 4Mbps circuits that connect to the NRC and media.
In addition, 8Mbps ATM broadcast links provide connectivity for the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) between each PRC and the SABC head offices, in Auckland Park.
Twenty-four primary rate interfaces (PRIs) provide voice services for the PRCs and each PRC has been supplied with a PABX Business System.
Redundant connection
Telkom has upgraded the existing infrastructure between IEC HQ and some MEOs. A VSAT backhaul link has been installed.
It adds that high-speed 4Mbps VPN access connects to Telkom's Hartebeeshoek earth station to facilitate data relay from remote VSAT MEOs to the results centre in the shortest possible time.
For the temporary Tshwane site, all telecommunications facilities are connected to the NRC via a Telkom Mobile Exchange, which is situated at the show grounds.
The mobile facility offers a redundant fibre-optic connection to two different Telkom exchanges. Each fibre connection has bandwidth capacity of 2.5Gbps connecting to Telkom's core network.
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