Johannesburg, 21 Aug 2014
Despite continued technical innovations to extract more capacity out of already strained copper networks, the reach and bandwidth gains are trivial compared to what optical fibre based networks can achieve.
"In the South African context we have reached the limit of how much technical tinkering will benefit the copper loop" says Andre Hoffman, vice chair of the FTTH Council Africa's Technical Advisory Committee.
Locally we have to contend with two very significant external environmental risks - The first being mother nature delivering approximately 20-million direct lightning strikes to ground per annum, with Gauteng alone receiving between 8-10 strikes per square kilometer per annum. The second risk is, of course, copper theft.
According to the SACCI Copper Theft Barometer for May 2014, theft levels increased to R15.4 million in May from R12.5 million in April and R11 million in March. The May figure is 71.1% higher than a year ago and the third consecutive monthly increase. In addition to these, the copper network is also vulnerable to water ingress during rainy conditions which further decreases network availability and up time for users.
At this point, considering the above mentioned facts, and taking into consideration the additional investment one has to make in technologies that can sweat copper and help overcome VECTORING, - only to provide a limited bandwidth capacity (500meg) over distances of merely 100m as proposed by such technical innovation - we have to ask ourselves if we are not just ‘rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic'?
The Fibre-to-the-Business and Fibre-to-the-Home market in South Africa is where the mobile phone market was in 1994. Only the rich, the famous and the politicians could afford them, but today everyone has a mobile phone… the same goes for FTTH. The tide is turning and we can see it. Technology and cost efficiencies, along with a more mature shared facility environment, will create the tipping point of cost effective FTTx deployments which will see investment in more access fibre capacity across the country.
Optic fibre is the only future proof fixed network solution on which to build a globally competitive national economy and to meet national growth imperatives.
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