FibreCo Telecommunications has gone live on its open-access dark fibre link along the N3 from Johannesburg to Durban, including the subsea cable landing stations of Seacom and the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) on the east coast.
The strategic link, which nets Seacom as one of FibreCo’s first customers, is the shortest dark fibre route interconnecting the regional data centres of Internet Solutions and Teraco, as well as the Seacom and EASSy subsea cable systems.
Sites along the route, namely in Germiston, Heidelberg, Warden, Harrismith, Ladysmith, Estcourt and Pietermaritzburg, and stretching to the cable landing station in Mtunzini, are connected.
“Our clients are able to lease dark fibre and connect using their own optical equipment, hosted at our built-for-purpose repeater sites, allowing complete flexibility of managing their own network,” says FibreCo head of technology Venita Engelbrecht.
FibreCo’s 100 Gb/s dense wavelength division multiplexing network also provides connectivity between key data centres and the cable landing stations.
The company’s open-access fibre-optic network spans more than 4 000 km, with underground fibre routes, high-speed optical equipment, carrier-grade Ethernet equipment and hosting and tower facilities interconnecting over 59 points of presence countrywide, including major data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London.
“Our continued investment in open-access infrastructure enables us to respond to the growing needs of our clients. This investment provides a long-awaited open-access redundant dark fibre infrastructure for the existing connectivity, making the multiple terabits of Internet connectivity from the subsea cables more resilient,” adds FibreCo CEO Simon Harvey.