Telkom 'ready for 2010'

Johannesburg - South African telecommunications provider Telkom is confident it will be able to meet Fifa's telecommunications requirements for both the Confederations Cup and the 2010 Fifa World Cup.

"We have exceeded the requirements of Fifa," said Telkom Fifa 2010 project director Thami Magazi. "All in all, I can confidently say that we're ready to make our nation proud because Telkom has teamed up to make 2010 a resounding success."

With the Confederations Cup set to take place in June 2009 and the 2010 Fifa World Cup kicking off a year later, the South African government has signed agreements and provided guarantees to ensure each event will be a success.

Telkom is responsible for ensuring that all information technology and telecommunication infrastructure is up and running in all stadiums across the country in time for both tournaments.

"Our main function is to provide fixed infrastructure for the Fifa World Cup and the Confederations Cup," said Magazi. "We must ensure that government meets and complies with all its guarantees."

Each stadium has two carrier rooms which act as an infrastructure hub and provide two links that transport visual and audio data. These links can carry up to 20 gigabytes of data for broadcast purposes as well as 2.5 gigabytes for media and IT needs.

Although one link would meet Fifa requirements, Telkom has provided a second as back-up.

"Essentially, our solution sees the deployment of identical infrastructure at all the 2010 stadia. This will optimise service delivery, maintenance and operations processes," said Magazi. "Our telecommunication solution provides 99.99% signal availability with no single point of failure."

Stadiums would then send their signals to Host Broadcast Services (HBS), which Fifa has appointed as the host broadcaster. Here the audio and visual information will be packaged and completed products sent to various networks both locally - such as the SABC - and internationally.

International signals will be sent along undersea fibre-optic cables such as the SAT3 and Safe cables.

All service provisioning will be monitored from Telkom's national network operations centre. "This will detect any faults or intrusions. In fact, our security is world class," said Magazi.

Once the World Cup is completed, the redundant infrastructure will be moved to other areas across South Africa. "It's not going to be a white elephant after the World Cup," he said.

- Fin24.com