Neotel goes down

Johannesburg - Just a day after announcing a massive collaboration with MTN to build a national fibre-optic long-haul network, Neotel has experienced its second cable break in two-and-a-half months, leaving some customers in the lurch.

ECN Telecoms CEO John Holdsworth, whose company counts 20% of JSE-listed companies among its client base and buys capacity from Neotel, said a network failure like this had a "catastrophic" impact on its customers, through no fault of its own.

Neotel media spokesperson Albi Modise confirmed that a cable had been cut in the Sandton/Rosebank area as a result of work being done in the area by a different company: "Our technical team has been dispatched to the area to ensure that the service is restored as soon as possible."

Modise said: "Neotel apologises profusely for the inconvenience that this disruption might have caused, and would like to assure everyone affected that all our energies are being directed at ensuring that the service is restored as soon as possible."

The previous failure occurred on November 3 2008.

ECN put out a press release at the time, saying Neotel had suffered a "major network failure resulting in a lengthy outage that has severely disrupted telecommunication services in the Johannesburg metropolitan area". This happened after a vehicle crashed into a telephone pole carrying the main Neotel fibre link between Neotel's data centre in Johannesburg and Sandton.

Where possible, companies prefer to lay cable underground, but this is significantly more expensive than laying overhead cables and not always possible in some areas.

At the time of that network failure, Holdsworth said the problem illustrated why the value-added network service providers (Vans) should be able to provide their own networks instead of being forced to lease capacity from the licensed operators.

But this has since changed.

From Friday, the operators are being summonsed to regulator Icasa's offices to collect their electronic communications network service (ECNS) licences from Icasa after Altech succeeded in taking the communications minister and Icasa to court over the issue in 2008.

The fact that the former Vans will now have ECNS licences - which allow them to build their own infrastructure and have other rights - puts them on a more level playing field with the incumbent operators.

However, it is unclear how many of them will roll out their own networks. The trend of infrastructure sharing is expected to increase, as is a move towards laying cable in selected areas and using wireless where the operators have access to frequency.

- Fin24.com