Still in Pursuit of the Fast Lane - Adoption, Usage, and Global Impact of Broadband Technologies - page 16

that Telkom charges a higher price for data transit
between Johannesburg and Cape Town than it does
between Cape Town and London. This lucrative
market has sparked investment in fibre optic cables
criss-crossing the country. Vodacom and MTN (the
operators which control about 80% of the mobile
market) are in the process of building their own
national fibre-optic networks, having recently
completed a number of metropolitan fibre rings.
Infraco (a government initiative) and Dark Fibre
Africa (a private company) are, likewise, aggres-
sively rolling out fibre-based networks of their own
in a bid to sell capacity to smaller service provid-
ers. However, even small operators now have the
right to set up their own national network, should
they choose to do so. In 2008, the Department
of Communications was taken to court over the
matter and was forced to issue network operator
licences (labelled Electronic Communications
Network Services, or ECNS, licences) to service
providers wanting to establish their own national,
or regional, network infrastructure.
Another stumbling block has been frequency
allocation. In order to operate a wireless network
of any sort, operators require access to radio fre-
quency for data transmission purposes. This is a na-
tionally controlled resource and, as such, operators
need to apply for spectrum. This ensures that no
two operators are using the same frequency in the
same geographic area, which would otherwise lead
to interference and, ultimately, network failure.
Policing spectrum also results in rogue operators
being punishable by law. Unfortunately, incum-
bents such as Sentech and Telkom are, at present,
hogging spectrum, meaning that whilst they have
the sole right to use it, they choose not do, and
no other operator therefore has the opportunity to
use this finite resource. This has the net effect of
crippling competition in the wireless arena. The
industry regulator, Independent Communication
Authority of South Africa (ICASA), is presently
drafting a policy whereby both prospective and
current wireless operators will have easier access

to spectrum and all operators will face a 'use it
or lose it' scenario.
A key cost saving measure is local peering,
brought about by ISPs interconnecting with each
other within the borders of the country. This
prevents data from being routed internationally
and is obviously a much cheaper mechanism.
The Johannesburg Internet Exchange (JINX)
is the peering point through which most large
players (with the notable exceptions of Telkom
and Vodacom) exchange data. The Cape Town
Internet Exchange (CINX) has recently been re-
commissioned and provides a similar facility for
ISPs which are based in the Western Cape region.
For ISPs who wish to bypass JINX and CINX
completely, direct linkages are the alternative. For
example, Telkom and Internet Solutions (a major
supplier of corporate bandwidth) operate direct
peering links between themselves.
International bandwidth is still in short sup-
ply. SEACOM, a privately funded undersea cable
connecting the east coast of Africa, was brought
into operation in July 2009. With a capacity of 1.2
Terabits per second, this promises to pose serious
competition to SAT-3/SAFE bandwidth. Kenya,
in particular, has recorded a surge in bandwidth
consumption due to the cheaper SEACOM band-
width, with some operators reportedly increasing
their data allowance at no extra cost to consumers.
The effect has yet to filter through to South African
consumers in a meaningful context. Unfortunately,
the SEACOM cable is rumoured to have some
limitations in that it has no redundancy should the
cable break. Furthermore, backhaul (terrestrial)
links have proved somewhat temperamental in
bringing this bandwidth onto the national grid,
heightening fears about unreliability.
Around the launch of SEACOM, Telkom
announced it was increasing the data cap on its
retail accounts (doubling it in most cases), but
that bandwidth is provisioned through the SAT-
3/SAFE cable. Telkom has also announced that
the capacity on the SAT-3/SAFE cable is being
radically increased (from 120Gbps to 340 Gbps)