The private sector and local government should be working together to avoid duplication of costly optic fibres in South Africa, according to industry experts.
The infrastructure of these costly optic fibres for internet are unnecessary as open-access to networks already exist said industry leaders at panel discussion hosted by Conduct Telecommunications last week.
Participants included representatives from Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), Vodacom and Internet Solutions (IS).
Michele McCann, Teraco Data Environments business development manager, said South Africa desperately needs a solution to keep up with growing demand.
There are many obstacles to building fibre networks across South Africa and sharing them is paramount to building competition. This will also help in saving those companies costs.
“Until recently, one of the main challenges of Africa was connectivity to and out of Africa, which was largely resolved when all the undersea cables landed,” she said.
Fibre access into buildings still remains a major obstacle in businesses using fibre-based network service according to Reshaad Sha, chief strategy officer at DFA.
Janine Rabelo, Vodacom’s executive head for enterprise access services, feels differently. Each technology access has their own primary benefit according to the needs of the provider.
“The debate is not about which one is better, but about how to use different access mediums to their full potential. We need to provide subscribers with best kind of connectivity throughout their day,” she said.
Sean Nourse, Internet Solutions connectivity executive, stressed that sharing infrastructure of the networks is vital and that fibre infrastructure is not the stopping point.
He also said government should take a look into stimulating an online delivery service such as e-services while also continuing demand for fibre instead of rolling out its own fibre.
