Convergence Partners Chairman, Andile Ngcaba, was named as TechCentral’s newsmaker of 2011 for his significant impact on South Africa’s technology sector over the past 12 months, topping an impressive list consisting of Pieter Uys, Mamodupi Mohlala, Karel Pienaar, Robert Gumede, Roy Padayachie, Lars Reichelt, Michael Jordaan, Pinky Moholi and Mteto Nyati.
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.
Co-author of Convergence Partners’ first research report, Russell Southwood of Balancing Act, reports back on the optimism surrounding the ICT sector during the 14th 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:
Convergence Partners investee company, Seacom has signed a master services agreement with Telecomunicações de Moçambique (TDM), the leading telecommunications service provider in Mozambique, which gives it access to the largest and most distributed fibre optic network in Mozambique as well as a diverse route into Zimbabwe and additional border presence into Malawi and South Africa.
The rise of YouTube, social media and other IP-based multi-media content delivery platforms globally and in Africa continues to drive the demand for broadband infrastructure. In order to meet the needs of multimedia content in the form of 3D and HD video, video conferencing, music and the social media explosion sweeping the African continent there has been a surge in the roll out of fibre optic networks.
This is according to Andile Ngcaba, founder and chairman of Convergence Partners, who spoke at a seminar arranged by Datanet Infrastructure Group in conjunction with the international Fibre Optic Association (FOA) and Triple Play Fibre Optic Solutions which provides FOA-approved fibre optic training.
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.
In the latest edition of Communications Africa Magazine, the technical and commercial benefits of geostationary communications satellites are assessed, contrasting them to both the failed high profile experimental satellite technologies of the previous decade, as well as to other communications technologies in Africa, notably fibre, as it arrives on the continent’s shores in abundance. In particular profiling the New Dawn satellite.
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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