FibreCo Telecommunications (“FibreCo”), a joint venture between Cell C, Convergence Partners and Internet Solutions, announced the awarding of a contract for construction of its nation-wide open-access fibre optic network. FibreCo’s objective is to facilitate affordable and reliable high-speed Internet access for South African citizens and businesses.

The initial phase of FibreCo’s development will result in the creation of 2,300 direct and indirect job opportunities. FibreCo will also facilitate the training of at least 100 fibre optic technicians who will be involved during construction and maintenance of the network in all provinces along its route. Furthermore, FibreCo will make heavily subsidized fibre capacity available to academic and research institutions, enabling greater innovation in the use of information and technology.

FibreCo’s total investment will amount to R5 billion.

The Company envisages the development of a national network stretching over 12,000 km. Phase 1 involves linking up Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban as well as the East and West coast submarine cable landing stations.

Andile Ngcaba, Chairman of FibreCo, said: “This landmark investment will provide affordable, reliable and fast Internet access to ordinary South Africans.”

FibreCo proudly announced that they have awarded the contract to ZTE for the network construction and supply of technology equipment. ZTE is China’s largest publicly listed global provider of telecommunications equipment and network solutions. Work on the initial leg of Phase 1 is already underway, which is a 1,900 km link between Johannesburg and Cape Town via the Free State and Eastern Cape valued at R1 billion.

FibreCo has also signed capacity purchase agreements with its first 3 clients for the Johannesburg-Cape Town route, namely BT, Cell C and Internet Solutions, allowing them ownership of fibre infrastructure and the ability to build bespoke optical transmission networks.

Arif Hussain, CEO of FibreCo, commented: “We are delighted to welcome BT, a client with a truly global brand, to the FibreCo network alongside Cell C and Internet Solutions, who have been valued partners since inception. On the strength of these contracts, coupled with the financial backing of our shareholders, we have secured the necessary funding”.

FibreCo Press Release

Article from ITWeb

Article from MyBroadband

Article from TechCentral

Seacom, a Convergence Partners investee company, has invested R100 million in additional South African infrastructure to meet the continuous high growth in demand for broadband services and applications. The investment includes the purchase of physical optical fibre links from Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) as well as installing the equipment required for Seacom to manage the network linking KwaZulu Natal’s coast where the Seacom marine cable lands to two redundant Points of Presence (PoPs) in Gauteng.

Initially, 100 Gigabit per second (Gb/s) of the fibre will be lit (using current 10 Gb/s technology) and a further 20 waves are expected to be lit within the next 12 months. Ultra-modern transmission technology is being used with 100 Gb/s per wavelength which gives the new link a design capacity of over 8 Terabit per second (Tb/s). This is in line with Seacom’s plans to expand the marine portion of the cable to over 4.8 Tb/s.

This enormous amount of capacity enables Seacom to align current and future customer needs with the explosion in broadband demand driven by a wave of content rich applications such as cloud computing to meet enterprise requirements, HD video streaming and IPTV services. This investment also supports Seacom’s recently launched Internet Protocol (IP) platform that will drive the proliferation of content created in Africa and the regional hosting of international content.

Brian Herlihy, Seacom CEO, said: “South Africa continues to offer tremendous growth opportunities and this investment confirms Seacom’s view that adequate infrastructure  will ensure that the market can absorb new capacity within record time.

“In our continuous quest to improve quality of service, this is one of the many investments that we are making to ensure that we provide our customers with the best possible support  as we continue to build the African Internet based on low-latency, high speed and reliable infrastructure.“

Managed by Seacom and its suppliers, the route is the company’s first co-build of this nature. It will be operated in parallel with Seacom’s existing routes and will provide customers with the benefit of protected services delivered across multiple, physically diverse routes and operated by multiple providers.

Suveer Ramdhani, Seacom’s Head of Product Strategy, said: “This new capacity will benefit the end user by enabling Seacom clients to bring new content rich products to market in a reliable and economical way.

“The scale of the capacity we are making available on the route is yet another first in Africa and you can expect us to continue rolling out more ground-breaking technological developments in the near future.”

Seacom believes in a world where the African Internet experience is characterised by abundant local content, minimal latency, fast download and streaming speeds, and interconnected African markets. Today, over a dozen countries across the African continent have access to Seacom’s low cost products and services via its extended network.

SEACOM Press Release

Engineering News

MoneyWeb Article

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

Less than two years after completing the undersea portion of the first system to connect Southern and Eastern Africa to the rest of the world via India and Europe, Convergence Partners’ investee company SEACOM continues to drive the growth of the African Internet by rolling-out an Internet Protocol, IP, Platform into its international core network.

The IP Platform project involves the design, deployment and operation of nine land-based Internet access points that will store popular web content closer to where the Internet is accessed, thereby enabling a richer and faster Internet browsing experience for end users. Six of these IP network nodes are already live including Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Maputo, Marseille, Mombasa and Mtunzini.

SEACOM’s IP platform will allow direct routing between African countries through a single seamless network. As a result, customers are able to reach multiple countries using the shortest path to final destination without Internet traffic being transferred via Europe. Local continuity through direct routing combined with increased resilience through SEACOM’s recent acquisition of east and west coast submarine cable capacity greatly reduces the exposure to data losses in the event of outages elsewhere on the network.

Brian Herlihy, SEACOM CEO, said: “Today, the majority of Internet content consumed in Africa is non-African, flowing from Europe and North America into Africa. We believe that the growth of the African ICT market, including mobile penetration and the eager adoption of social networking, coupled with the development of cloud services will result in a rapid increase in content on African soil.

“In the near future, the rest of the world will be viewing media generated in and stored on the African continent and SEACOM will remain at the forefront of developing the African Internet to support this trend.”

CISCO, Dimension Data and Interoute were closely involved in the design, procurement, logistics and deployment of the SEACOM IP network. This approach of partnering with established players to provide broadband services will continue as SEACOM develops its products and services based on resiliency, service quality and flexibility in line with customers’ evolving needs.

SEACOM truly believes in a world where the African Internet experience is characterised by abundant local content, minimal latency, fast download and streaming speeds, and interconnected African markets. Today, over a dozen countries across the African continent have access to SEACOM’s low cost products and services via its extended network.

SEACOM Press Release

Dimension Data subsidiary Plessey has won a R20m contract to install and maintain 11 regeneration sites on Dark Fibre Africa’s fibre cable linking Empangeni on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast and Pretoria in Gauteng.

Plessey chief operating officer Howard Earley says the sites will house equipment that will pick up any data on the fibre and rebroadcast it using a booster to make sure that data degradation doesn’t occur.

“The fibre is more than 400km long. If you just pump data down the line, you will get a garbled mess out the other end. But the regeneration sites will basically boost the data so what you put in, you get out at the end,” he says.

The sites will be hosted at Bronkhorstspruit, Middelburg, Hendrina, Ermelo, Panbult, Piet Retief, Paulpietersburg, Vryheid, Zulu Rock, Melmoth and Empangeni.

Earley says Plessey will build the sites, install and maintain the equipment, and ensure that containers are air-conditioned and are properly secured.

The cable system carries traffic from the Seacom submarine cable to Gauteng.

Each site will have mains power, a back-up generator and battery back-up facilities, and the company says the sites should have 99,95% uptime.

Plessey will monitor each site from its network operations centre in Midrand and will also station technicians along the route to carry out preventative maintenance and respond to any incidents.

Earley says the company has a 15-year contract with Dark Fibre Africa to provide space and power within each of the 11 sites.

See attached TechCentral Article

Plessey Press Release

NOC pictures

The Intelsat New Dawn satellite is scheduled to be launched on 29 March 2011 from Arianespace’s launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. Intelsat New Dawn is the first ever African private sector communications satellite.

A joint-venture between a consortium led by Convergence Partners and Intelsat S.A., the world’s leading provider of fixed satellite services, the New Dawn satellite and its 28 C-band and 24 Ku-band 36 MHz transponder units are designed specifically to supply critical communications infrastructure for African customers. Operating from a geostationary orbital slot at 32.8 degrees East, Intelsat New Dawn will be ideally positioned to serve Africa through a payload optimized to deliver wireless backhaul, broadband and media content – the fastest growing satellite-based applications in Africa.

Delivered on time and within the originally announced $250 million budget, the Intelsat New Dawn venture has been approximately 90% funded from African sources. The Convergence Partners consortium also includes strategic shareholder Altirah Telecoms and the not-for-profit Convergence Partners Foundation.

When placed into service in the second quarter of 2011, Intelsat New Dawn will address the capacity backlog faced by African wireless telecom operators, broadband service providers, corporate network service providers and media operators who have experienced exceptional growth along with the economic development of the region. Customers contracting for capacity in advance of launch are the leading communications services providers in the region, including Vodacom International Ltd, Gateway Communications Africa (UK) Ltd, Bharti Airtel (originally contracted through Celtel Nigeria) and Gilat Satcom.

Thierry Guillemin, Chief Technical Officer of Intelsat, said, “With manufacturing of the satellite now concluding, our team transitions its focus to the launch mission in French Guiana. We will conduct tests on-site as the final preparations for this historic satellite are completed.”

Andile Ngcaba, Chairman of Convergence Partners, said, “With a launch slot secured for Intelsat New Dawn, we are now on the cusp of seeing this landmark venture become a reality. The project has been in development for five years, with the last two-and–a-half focusing on construction. When launched, the satellite will not only deliver crucial services specifically tailored for Africa, it will also herald the dawn of a new era where Africans enjoy far greater involvement in the space communications industry.”

Commissioned in December 2008 and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation, the hybrid C-band/Ku- band satellite will be operated and marketed as a part of the global Intelsat fleet, bringing to 22 the number of Intelsat satellites serving Africa. Arianespace was selected as the launch partner and will use the most powerful version in the Ariane 5 range, the Ariane 5 ECA (Cryogenic Evolution type A), for this dual payload mission of the Intelsat New Dawn and Yahsat 1A telecommunications satellites. The Ariane 5 launcher for the Intelsat New Dawn satellite recently arrived at the Spaceport in French Guiana, where it is being readied for the mission.

For more details on Intelsat New Dawn and to view frequent updates leading up to the launch, please visit www.intelsatnewdawn.com.

About Intelsat New Dawn

Initially announced in December 2008, the US$250 million project is funded approximately 15% with equity and 85% with debt. African institutions are providing approximately 90% of the total financing required for the joint venture and Intelsat will contribute the balance. Nedbank Capital, part of the Nedbank Group (one of South Africa’s largest banking groups) and a leading telecom project financier in South Africa, has arranged the non-recourse debt financing. A consortium of lenders including Nedbank, the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa and the African Development Bank will provide the debt funding. The equity is provided by Intelsat (74.9%) and the Convergence Partners- led group (25.1%), which also includes Altirah Telecoms and the not-for-profit Convergence Partners Foundation.

Read more here!

New Dawn press release 16 Feb 2011 FINAL

BusinessDay Article

IT Online Article

Techcentral Article

Business Wire Article

MyBroadband Article

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Engineering News

The Convergence Partners stand was a hive of activity for the duration of the event (especially when our gorgeous ladies served up some great cocktails at the end of day 1). Companies in the Convergence Partners stand that were formally exhibiting at AfricaCom included Seacom, Convergence Wireless Networks (comprising WiA and Intra), Intelsat New Dawn Satellite Project, Plessey, Comsol, Integrat, Skillpod Media, Bloodhound, Inala, Convergence Border Management Solutions, as well as the Convergence Partners Foundation.

AfircaCom also coincided with the media launch of Convergence Partners’ latest project, FibreCo (see below blog).

The main themes discussed at the conference this year centred around:

• infrastructure sharing and managed services – in light of declining ARPUs, operators are seeking significant cost reduction models;
• rural connectivity – the next major untapped market, although sustainable, scalable models remain challenging; and
• the continuing shift from voice services (still the majority of the industry revenue base) to data and VAS, driven by the proliferation of broadband hungry smartphones.

Skillpod Media CEO Mark van Diggelen said: “AfricaCom was SkillPod Media’s first exposure to a mobile / telco trade event, we used it to showcase our new online and mobile platforms and experienced resoundingly positive feedback from the industry, resulting in a number of key contacts been met, with whom discussions have started. Further to this the professionalism of the Convergence stand drew in a plethora of delegates, all interested in better understanding the services on offer by SkillPod, again resulting in a lot of contacts being made with industry players, wishing to provide services to our overall offering and make use of a number of our services for their solutions. Overall the event was a resounding success, in that our new solutions were warmly received, we managed to network with key contacts, either at the stand or at the various networking events and more so we interacted with a number of key industry players that highlighted a number of opportunities, that we’d previously never considered.

According to Darren Morgan, Head of Sales at Comsol, “AfricaCom was a wonderful experience this year, it’s always great to be under one roof with all the peers of your industry. It’s rare to have all vendors, suppliers, integrators and customers from a certain industry in the same place at the same time and this certainly makes the event a memorable one. This year we were lucky enough to share a stand with fellow companies involved with the Convergence Partners family and that certainly added to the event for us.  A fantastic experience all round”.

Integrat Director, Leonard Cremer said: “The Convergence stand was a great initiative and Integrat will definitely be joining again next year. Integrat not only benefited by exhibiting at the show but also believes it extracted real value from the networking between the Convergence companies”.

We look forward to seeing everyone again in 2011!

See attached pics

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

New Dawn, the first of its kind joint venture between Convergence Partners and Intelsat, is on track to launch its $250m geostationary communications satellite, which is targeted at the African market, by the end of the year, Flavien Bachabi, vice-president for Intelsat Africa said yesterday, 13 April 2010.

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Business Day

IT News Africa

Tech Central

IT-Online

Conclusion: The African communications growth story can no longer be viewed as a frontier opportunity as more and more players from developed markets enter the African market.

Rather, the market is showing signs of greater maturity reflected by, amongst other: (i) increased competition; (ii) reducing gross margins; (iii) declining ARPUs; (iv) greater complexity of product offering and mobile payment services; (v) active attempts by incumbent mobile and fixed-line operators to expand into other parts of the value chain; and (vi) the emergence of infrastructure sharing models. While subscriber growth remains superior to other regions, with significant pent-up demand remaining, these changes in the communications landscape is forcing operators to rethink their strategies and focus on the next wave of growth.

Significantly, there have been a number of major developments that will catapult the African communications market into another league from both a cost and bandwidth perspective. These include the arrival of new international submarine fibre optic cables such as Seacom connecting the East African seaboard to international submarine fibre networks and the accelerated liberalisation of African communications markets.

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