CENTURION, Gauteng – 17 October 2012 – Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) has introduced an affordable shaped fibre offering that will transform the way people do business in future. Utilising its long-haul route from KwaZulu-Natal to Gauteng, licensed service providers can now pay by the gigabit-per-second rather than for a full fibre pair.
DFA’s CEO Gustav Smit says this offering should result in massive cost savings compared to what was offered before, especially compared to what is available in the ‘managed services’ market at the moment.
Customers will pay a fixed monthly lease, based on the transmission speed they need and the fibre comes with the same trusted, high-quality monitoring and maintenance service for which DFA is renowned.
DFA’s extensive metro fibre networks in Gauteng and Durban are linked to the long-haul connection points in Pretoria and Durban. This means that points of presence in these metro areas can easily be linked to the long-haul route.
Smit says long-haul bandwidth can be extremely expensive and can easily increase operating costs and eat into one’s profit. “Now there is an alternative, shaped fibre from DFA. With our shaped fibre offering you can lease a dedicated, dark fibre pair between any two repeaters on our long-haul route between Durban and Pretoria.”
The new shaped fibre will cost between R200 000 and R500 000 per month for up to 1Gbps and 5Gbps respectively. This is a price reduction of 78% on the 1Gbps option. However, should customers exceed 5Gbps, the current unlimited option at R900 000 per month will apply.
He says it is important to note that DFA does not light fibre or sell managed services. “Customers still install their own equipment on our dark fibre, but they only pay for the speeds at which they transmit their data. We know that many of our clients could benefit from connections on this route, but that their bandwidth requirements don’t necessarily justify a full-capacity fibre channel.”
Customers may install and use any transmission equipment on DFA’s long-haul fibre. DFA’s technical experts are available to assist customers to plan their transmission networks optimally.
Furthermore, as a standard service, DFA monitors its fibre network for faults around the clock from its dedicated Network Operations Centre in Rivonia, Johannesburg. Its uptime is far above the industry standard, but in the unlikely event that fibre faults do occur, DFA will repair it well within the standard agreement of four hours.
“Our long-haul optical fibre route has repeater sites in several cities and towns starting in Persequor Park in Pretoria. It runs through Bronkhorstspruit, Middelburg, Hendrina, Busby Mills, Piet Retief, Paulpietersburg, Vryheid, Witrand, Melmoth, Empangeni, via the SEACOM Landing Station in Mtunzini, and terminates at Teraco in Riverhorse Valley Durban,” he concludes.
DFA is the premier wholesale, open-access fibre-infrastructure and -connectivity provider in South Africa. We finance, build, install, manage, and maintain a world-class fibre network to transmit metro and long-haul telecommunications traffic. We started rolling out our fibre network in 2007, and to date, we have deployed over 13,000 km of ducting infrastructure in major metros, secondary cities, and smaller towns. Our network runs with an industry-leading uptime of 99.98%. We lease our secure transmission and backbone fibre infrastructure and provide associated connectivity services to telecommunications operators, Internet service providers, media conglomerates, tertiary education institutions, municipalities, government organizations, and other businesses, large and small, on equal terms. DFA is a Level 3 B-BBEE Contributor on the ICT Sector Codes.
Press contacts
Tribeca PR for DFA
dfa@tribecapr.co.za