EOH Network Solutions, a licensed telecommunications company and division of EOH, has today established one of the first 10 Gbps services to go live over the recently deployed Fibreco network between Gauteng and Cape Town.

The Fibreco fibre project has been highly anticipated over the last 18 months due to the expectation of bringing much needed competition on national long haul telecommunications infrastructure, and as a result, lower cost. But while this will support new initiatives for EOH, it will not replace the company’s current national services on Telkom.

Stuart Hardy, Business Unit Manager of EOH’s Networks Division, confirmed that EOH Networks’ primary national network, which supports the networks of some of the largest companies in the country, will remain Telkom, and Fibraco will act as a secondary route.

“Telkom’s national fibre network, for me, still represents the highest level of quality and engineering available on national routes in South Africa. And while it comes at a premium, allows us to feel confident around national service delivery. Because Fibreco is so new, we are cautiously optimistic on how we incorporate this product into our network,” Hardy says.

He adds that there are several initiatives where this 10 Gbps capacity will be used, which will support other important strategies within the group.

“We are planning to use this additional capacity to drive some of our products in the market, including national replication between data centres, cloud service delivery to Cape Town, and national backhaul of SAT 3 capacity. And some of our larger enterprise clients will be extending their LANs using VPLS between JHB and Cape Town at STM1 level (155 Mbps).”

Hardy notes that proving L2 or VPLS services over this link for enterprise can considerably reduce the cost of national transit in comparison to MPLS.