Johannesburg - In a race between man and a data capsule of 5.4 gigabytes, which would win if that man were Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton?
That's the question Vodacom Group hopes to settle as part of the South African launch of its Metro Ethernet product later this month.
According to Ermano Quartero, managing executive of products and services at Vodacom Business, the square-off between Hamilton and technology will be a closely-run race. "The odds are pretty even," he told Fin24.com.
The Vodacom Group subsidiary's Metro Ethernet makes use of fibre-optic rings it has installed around major business centres in South Africa.
Using these fibre-optic connections, Vodacom Business will be able to connect a business directly to its network without the need for a third party. In the past, Vodacom would have had to use Telkom infrastructure.
The plan is to have Hamilton race the data capsule which will be transmitted via a Vodacom connection from Midrand to Sandton against his Mercedes-Benz AMG C63.
The Mercedes-Benz has a top speed of 250km/h; for its part, the data capsule has enough downloading data to contain about five full-length movies.
No third parties needed
A Metro Ethernet connection provides 1Gbps of bandwidth and Vodacom Business promises a 99.7% uptime for the connection.
With the effective deregulation of South Africa's telecommunications market, Vodacom has been free to construct its own national network. Metro Ethernet is one of its products that benefits from this.
"Metro Ethernet enables businesses to have more control over their information and communications technology, supported by the latest in fibre-optic solutions," said Quartero.
"With Metro E, our clients have access to super-fast, always-reliable bandwidth delivered directly to their doorstep - the 'last mile' access giving them the agility required to compete in an exponentially changing world, with no necessity to involve third parties," he said.
Vodacom has constructed 11 fibre-optic rings, of which it says 10 are already active.
ICT industry analyst for Frost & Sullivan, Protea Hirschel, said it remained to be seen whether customers truly received the speed from these connections that Vodacom is advertising.
Metro Ethernet was more likely to fit the needs of big businesses and less likely to appeal to small enterprises, she said.
Fibre-optic connections were fast, but other parts of Vodacom's network could cause bottlenecks, she said.
"Obviously, Vodacom will conduct the race against Hamilton using ideal conditions for the connection. Will businesses really get 1 Gbps? I'm not sure - but it will trickle down and improve overall performance.
"International bandwidth is no longer a problem, but areas of Vodacom's own network could be."
She added that Vodacom might benefit from its early entrance into this new market of high-speed connectivity for big businesses, but that competition is mounting.
"All operators are aggressively putting in fibre. It's also interesting to note that prices are no longer the main issue and it's now about quality and caps."
She added that Vodacom's first-mover advantage may also be used to justify high pricing, although tariffs have not yet been announced for the service.
- Fin24.com