When the competing fleet of 11-strong crews of professional sailors dock in Cape Town harbour after up to 22 days on the open sea, Convergence Partners’ investee companies, Dimension Data, Internet Solutions and Comsol, have exclusivity in providing connectivity for the race fleet while it is docked in the Mother City port for repairs and re-stocking. The Cape Town leg of the race will take place in early December.

The Volvo Ocean Race has been held for 38 years, 11 of these under the Volvo banner. It’s an iconic event, starting in the Spanish port of Alicante in October 2011, and finishing in Galway, Ireland in 2012. On the way, the race visits Cape Town (South Africa), Abu Dhabi (UAE), Sanya (China), Auckland (New Zealand), Itajai (Brazil), Miami (USA), Lisbon (Portugal) and Lorient (France). The race is contested by 11-strong crews of professional sailors, who will endure temperatures ranging from -15 to +40 degrees Celsius over the course of the race. The teams compete in state-of-the-art Volvo Open 70s, the fastest racing yacht in the world.

John van der Vyver, Financial Director of Dimension Data Western Cape says, “The push for even minor advantages means the sailing teams are at the forefront of technological advances in the industry. Again, this has echoes in our own business, where it’s vital that we are ahead of the pack to offer our clients the gains that the latest technology offers. We understand competitiveness and the drive to get the edge.”

Van der Vyver goes on to explain that Dimension Data, Internet Solutions and Comsol have been appointed joint sponsors with exclusivity in the category of Information Technology. “This means we will jointly enable their connectivity while in port in Cape Town. Some of the technology we’ll be providing to support the IT requirements of the crews and associated personnel includes two Polycom units, a dedicated technical resource to provide hands-on assistance to the crews with laptops and connectivity so they can touch base with family and loved ones at home, all onsite LAN cabling to establish a secure and reliable onsite command centre, and all bandwidth requirements to support Internet use and traffic.”

Howard Early, COO of Plessey, explains the growing need for specialist infrastructure management in the fast-changing telco world.

In the early days of telecoms, it was taken for granted that the telco would build, operate and maintain its own infrastructure. Now, while many telcos do still operate their own infrastructure, fewer actually build it, and many outsource the maintenance of it.

In the new world of converged communications, where telcos and service providers have their hands full creating, marketing and delivering products and services to their customers, building, operating and maintaining infrastructure is even less core to their business.

Read more here! Itweb.co.za

Information technology (IT) services provider Dimension Data, a Convergence Partners investee, has been awarded the contract to supply all IT services for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change seventeenth Conference of the Parties (COP 17) event.

The contract entails the supply of network, audio, visual, wireless and Internet connectivity across the Durban venue.

Network company Cisco will provide the technology for the network, audio, visual and wireless solutions and Internet service provider Neotel will provide Internet connectivity and bandwidth for telepresence and videoconferencing.

“Dimension Data is the service integrator across the partners and will provide consulting and design services for the actual cabling and data centre infrastructure at the venue,” says Dimension Data regional executive director Jay Reddy.

The company’s sustainability strategy is based on three focus areas, namely commitments and efforts to improve its own sustainability, its employee engagement and the services and solutions that help clients deliver on their sustainability strategies.

“Our focus on sustainable solutions helps us win contracts such as COP 17,” enthuses Dimension Data sustainability director Colin Curtis.

He states that climate change is of great concern to Dimension Data and the company believes COP 17 is an important event that will deliver definitive actions for governments, businesses and individuals to reduce their impact on the environment.

Since 2007, the company has reduced its carbon footprint by 43% and has reduced the travel related emissions for each of its employees by 59%. Reddy says the company is mindful of continuing its focus to meet the aims of COP 17.

Dimension Data is also a member of environmental body Green Grid, which is a consortium of organisations, businesses, policymakers, technology providers and utility companies that aim to collaborate to improve resource efficiency of data centre and business computing ecosystems.

The company participates in work groups and the development of technical specifications that improve the efficiency and reduce the environmental impact of business computing.

Article from Engineering News

SEACOM and MAIN One, the only two privately funded and open-access based African submarine fibre optic cable systems, were awarded “Best Pan African Initiative” at the AfricaCom Awards 2011 ceremony held in Cape Town, South Africa, last week. The award recognises an initiative taken by an organisation or a group of organisations to improve telecommunications services at a regional or continental level.

Main One Chief Executive Officer, Funke Opeke, explained: “Through this partnership, Main One and SEACOM have extended their individual cable systems to the opposite coasts of Africa without the efforts required to construct brand new routes.

“The ability to connect the east and west coast of the continent directly results in improved throughput but also provides a system around most of the continent which provides improved redundancy for telecommunications operators.”

Commenting on the award, Mark Simpson, SEACOM CEO, said: “We are honoured to be recognised once again for our efforts in continuously extending pan-African connectivity by investing in infrastructure, products and services that meet the continent’s insatiable demand for bandwidth.

“This partnership shows our determination to find viable ways to extend our system with partners who share our vision of building the African Internet on an open and equitable basis.”

In addition, MTN South Africa received awards for the ‘Best Network Improvement’, for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) pilot test in Gauteng province, and ‘Best Marketing Campaign (dubbed Bow Wow) for MTN Zone.

MTN South Africa’s Chief Marketing Officer, Serame Taukobong said: “MTN is ecstatic to have once again gained this important recognition. These awards go to thousands of MTN employees, our partners and customers who shared the MTN vision with us and ensured that our objectives are realised.

“The accolades are further affirmation from the industry and our customers that we are on the right track and need to cement the work we have been doing to provide our customers with the seamless experience they have come to expect from MTN.”

Article in Seacom website

The Guardian Nigeria

Gadget Magazine

Co-author of Convergence Partners’ first research report, Russell Southwood of Balancing Act, reports back on the optimism surrounding the ICT sector during the 14^th annual AfricaCom conference held in Cape Town in November 2011.

Russell reported that AfricaCom, expanded this year to include Enterprise ICT and Africast streams, has become a necessary meeting place for the role-players in the industry. He identified the following key threads at the conference:

• International bandwidth growth. The primary drivers for all this growth are mobile internet and WiMAX;

• ACE making steady progress, although it has not yet funded its South Africa leg. WIOCC has also signed an agreement with WACS to give it a west coast redundancy route;

• The steady growth of national and cross-border terrestrial fibre although price and access still remain issues;

• Liquid Telecom’s and other providers network stretches north, but gaps;

• Satellite operators seem to have weathered the fibre storm, by using broadcasting to fill the gap;

• Yahsat is set to launch its new products early next year which promises to “shake the market up.” 03B is still looking at a 2013 launch date but its business case seems increasingly shaky;

• Mobile content gets more and more interesting;

• Australia’s biNU mobile have a feature phone content platform that has over 2 million users globally;

• OnMobile from India has seen sales in Africa ahead of expectations. Looking to tapi into the independent music labels;

• A steady trickle of VOD content offerings were on display, including LogiWays and Jamii;

• Mobile payment breakthrough still awaited, but lots of offerings tied to a single operator and/or financial institution;

• Nigeria seems to be leading the way with a slightly more open process of platforms getting to market e.g. Paga in Nigeria and Mobipay in Tanzania.

Balancing Act Africa

Seventeen years ago Wired published Neal Stephenson’s magisterial epic “Mother Earth Mother Board”, about the web of undersea fibre-optic cables being built to connect all of humanity. Well – almost all. Africa, again, was left behind. Until 2009, all of East Africa could only connect to the Internet over slow and hugely expensive satellite links.

Finally, two years ago, SEACOM, a Convergence Partners investee company, laid a cable along the East African coast to Mumbai; then tributaries were run thousands of kilometers inland, as far as Uganda and even Rwanda; and later this year, a direct connection to Europe will be lit up. A recent article in TechCruch explores some of the inner workings and history of the SEACOM undersea cable.

As noted in the abovementioned article, the entry of SEACOM has chopped the cost of bandwidth from US $5,000 per megabit/s per month to approximately $100, hugely increased capacity to 1.28 terabits/second, and given more than 100 million people (and counting) access to broadband Internet for the very first time.

Landing the cables was the hard part. It took three months to dig, lay, and cover those seven kilometres, using local barges and professional divers. By contrast, the cable that runs to Djibouti along the 1500 kilometres of Somalia’s wild coast was laid in less than a month not counting the 55 days that the ship had to rest in port because of the danger of pirates.

The undersea cable consists of the fibres themselves, as thin as human hairs, wrapped in a copper sheath that carries up to 10,000 DC volts to power the repeaters every 100km that keep the signals comprehensible. In depths less than a kilometre, this is all sheathed in thick additional armour.

SEACOM is a triumph of engineering, and a profoundly important one. In Kenya today, a SIM card costs less than a beer, and a minute of 2G Internet access costs only 2.5 cents. That’s still too much, but far less than in the bad old days.

See attached article

Article in pdf

FibreCo Telecommunications (“FibreCo”), a partnership between Cell C, Internet Solutions and Convergence Partners, announced today that it will be developing an open-access long-haul terrestrial fibre optic broadband network as an answer to the need for national transmission infrastructure to meet the nation’s aspirations for world-class broadband connectivity.

FibreCo brings the ability to fund, deploy and manage a cost-effective high speed long-haul fibre network which will support the explosive growth in bandwidth requirements of the country anticipated over the coming years.

Construction of the network will follow a three-phase approach and ultimately will cover a total distance in excess of 12,000km. The initial phase will focus on rolling out a 4,500km redundant core ring linking Gauteng, Cape Town and Durban to international cable landing stations within two years.

Cell C’s extensive national wireless network will provide the platform for the co-location of optical transmission equipment at their base stations as well as wireless access solutions for FibreCo’s customers. Through Internet Solutions, FibreCo has access to deep capabilities in the delivery of value-added networking solutions into the enterprise market, including facilities for the hosting of its customers optical termination equipment in urban centres. Convergence Partners contributes unmatched expertise in the development and financial structuring of large scale telecommunications infrastructure projects.

FibreCo is building a state-of-the-art managed network to deliver the most efficient route combinations and services to its customers, through the deployment of its own fibre optic cable and related infrastructure, as well as through partnerships or strategic alliances with other infrastructure providers wherever appropriate.

Lars P. Reichelt, CEO of Cell C, said:

“FibreCo’s objective is to completely transform the dynamics of SA’s broadband sector by building and managing a long-haul national fibre-optic transmission network on an open-access model.

“By enabling a step change in the affordability of true high-speed connectivity for customers across South Africa, FibreCo is aiming to have a strong positive socio-economic impact for the country by improving the overall broadband experience for users and the competitiveness of both the public and private sectors.”

Andile Ngcaba, Chairman of Convergence Partners said:

“Whilst the cost of international transmission has dropped significantly since 2009 with the arrival of new undersea fibre networks, national transmission in South Africa still accounts for a very significant proportion of telecommunications costs to end users and constitutes a critical bottleneck to ordinary citizens and businesses.

“Through its open-access pricing model, FibreCo will effectively transfer the significant economies of scale inherent in fibre-optic networking technologies to its customers, paving the way for lower broadband access costs for end users, improvements in communications service quality and innovation and enhanced regional connectivity.

Derek Wilcocks, MD of Internet Solutions said:

“FibreCo’s approach will maximize the opportunities afforded by the massive increase in international bandwidth capacity coming to SA’s shores via undersea cables over the next couple of years and allow South African businesses and end-users to fully experience the opportunities created by the rapid advances in voice, video and broadband computer applications worldwide.”

FibreCo is based in Johannesburg, with a full management team headed up by Arif Hussain. The FibreCo team comprises experienced professionals in telecommunications, project management and strategy.

See attached press release

Read more here

Comsol reports that wireless 
telecoms networks and their maintenance are a growing focus among private clients, as the costs of owning and maintaining a private network soar.

Large companies across many vertical markets, especially mining operators, are increasingly looking to wireless networks to provide communications solutions between different parts of the organisation. This is in part owing to capital still being difficult to raise in the uncertain and volatile post-
recession period, the company says.

Comsol sales manager Darren Morgan says that wireless communications networks provide a reliable alternative to laying wires for a similar network. Wireless networks provide high-speed connections, reduced maintenance and are able to cover large distances in remote areas.

Morgan notes that, in the realm of wireless communications, the greatest threat to hardware life-cycle costs is technological advances. 
This often prompts whole networks to be upgraded before the hardware has reached the end of its service life, owing to it being technologically inferior. This is why Comsol offers fully managed services, where equipment is owned by Comsol and the service it provides is offered on an operating expenditure basis.

Morgan explains that the older technology would then be redeployed elsewhere, or redis-
tributed through Comsol’s retail outlets. The client’s network will be upgraded, while the service fees will be increased in relation to the speed of the new network.

Comsol offers a wide range of implementation and maintenance contracts, tailored to specific client needs. Morgan says that clients may choose to own the network hardware, and contract Comsol to perform maintenance. 
Clients have access to a 24/7 call centre to report any failures, the company reports.

Clients may also opt for a comprehensive solution, where Comsol owns the wireless network, and installs and maintains it to client specifications. Such networks are typically under constant surveillance from a remote control office. Technicians monitor all 
aspects of the network, including energy management, hardware cooling and availability, 
and regular maintenance is carried out.

An advantage in opting for this contract is that clients do not incur the 
depreciation of the hardware, and are not responsible for maintaining the network, Comsol states.

“Mines favour our networks, owing to commercial telecommunications operators usually not having networks in the often rural settings in which they 
operate.

“By using their own network, miners are able to reduce the number of connections to commercial communications service providers, by communicating 
internally over vast distances,” he explains.

While wireless networks can be deployed almost instantaneously, a number of contractors involved with the construction of State-owned power utility Eskom’s new coal-fired Medupi power station needed a quick and reliable communications network, from Gauteng to the Limpopo site.

“We are currently able to provide about 60 contractors with independent, reliable wireless communications networks. Individual networks were implemented, so that contractors do not have to contend among themselves for the available bandwidth,” he explains.

The company also reports being involved in the design, construction and maintenance of a 
1 200-km link in Kenya. Morgan notes that, given the vast distances involved in the link, the use of a wireless network reduces the amount of maintenance needed, 
when compared with those of conventional systems.

“The amount of paperwork, in the form of applications to local authorities and to acquire land rights, is also 
reduced, resulting in faster implementation times,” he says.

Further, Comsol reports that it maintains aggressive service level agreements (SLAs) that 
ensure speedy service delivery. The company has a number of 
offices spread across South Africa to reduce its response times to failures, as agreed in its rigorous SLAs.

“On average, the company achieves a seven-hour response time to failures at some of our most remote clients.

“Should we fail to deliver on our SLAs, we have agreed to
severe penalties,” he says.

See attached link

TechCentral, leading online technology website, has named Seacom President, Brian Herlihy as “the obvious choice” for Newsmaker of the Year for 2009. Seacom went live in July 2009 and has already resulted in dramatic price reductions and new investments in terrestrial infrastructure in East Africa.

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