Teraco lands Broadband Infraco as its latest major carrier

Issued by Teraco Data Environments
Johannesburg, Jun 18, 2010

Teraco Data Environments, South Africa`s first provider of vendor-neutral data centres, has announced that Broadband Infraco will offer Tier 1 backbone services from within two of its national facilities, establishing a presence for South Africa`s largest long-haul carrier in the Teraco `meet me` rooms.

Broadband Infraco is a state-owned telecommunications service provider, which will formally launch its services to the wholesale market later this year. Its mandate is to reduce the cost of national long-distance communications through a national long-haul service and an international marine cable network. Broadband Infraco`s individual electronic communications network services (I-ECNS) licence allows it to sell wholesale capacity on its fibre-optic network.

“Broadband Infraco offers carriers and service providers an important Tier 1 alternative in terms of national long-haul connectivity,” says Dave Smith, chief executive of Broadband Infraco.

Lex van Wyk, managing director of Teraco, elaborates: “Broadband Infraco`s co-location in Teraco will give customers direct access to Broadband Infraco`s significant national fibre-optic network, which totals 11 700km of cable across South Africa, as well as future capacity on WACS, the West African Cable System in which Broadband Infraco is a significant investor.”

Broadband Infraco has already started testing its new nodes in Teraco`s Cape Town and Johannesburg data centres, and will start provisioning services towards the end of June.

“Co-location in Teraco`s world-class data centre facilities rather than building its own facilities made perfect sense to Broadband Infraco,” continues Dave Smith. “Teraco`s vendor neutral principle offers Broadband Infraco the carrier independence that was key for us in delivering on our mandate. Our presence in the Teraco facility will ensure our customers get fast, reliable connections directly into our national backbone networks. It will also give Broadband Infraco an opportunity to reach new customers who now have more choice.”

Broadband Infraco is joining other network providers that have deployed layer two infrastructure in Teraco, namely Dark Fibre Africa, Telkom, Neotel, Cell C, Vodacom Business, AfricaInx as well as other network service providers.