The investment in Century City Connect and its Open Access fibre network – believed to be the first of its kind on African Continent - forms part of the Rabie Property Group’s diversification programme going forward. It follows years of research and development by specialists in the field.
The open access Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTx) network will be “carrier neutral” which means that businesses an residents situated in Century City will not be tied in or forced to use any specific voice or Internet Service Provide (ISP).
Century City Connect clients will have a choice of a number of pre-selected blue-chip ISPs to choose from, hosting their services in a purposely built Century City Connect Optical Exchange Node (OEN).
In this way Century City Connect will ensure that only the best and fastest voice and broadband services are offe to people living and working in Century City which will bring Century City in line with most first world countries wh enjoy an average global residential internet connection download speed of 4,4 Megabits per second which is at l 10 times faster than what most South African households currently experience with their Telkom ADSL or mobile HSDPA connections.
Rabie director Greg Deans says the biggest challenge for leading ISPs today is the question of when they shoul invest in bringing fibre connectivity to a corporate and commercial node like Century City.
“ISPs basically have had to respond on an ad-hoc basis to enquiries from their clients and only if any proposed connection warrants all the expenses associated with servicing potentially only one customer in such an area, the choice is often to simply fall back on Telkom’s existing copper infrastructure due to the extended Return on Investment associated with such fibre installations.
“Where they do opt to lay fibre, the high cost of this has to be recouped from the client who is then tied into that particular ISP on a lengthy contract even if they are unhappy with the service provided.”
Century City Connect will fast-track and deploy a fibre connection to each stand boundary in Century City provid ISPs with a fast and simple path to in turn provide super fast broadband and high quality voice services, combine with the latest IP media and wireless mobility services, to clients within Century City.
The Century City Property Owners Association put a moratorium on trench digging six months back until a single trenching solution could be finalised. The rollout of the fibre network will be done on a phased basis prioritising n developments both residential and commercial currently under construction, those companies that had been effe by the moratorium and other companies at Century City whose demand for broadband services was critical.
All future commercial and residential developments will be on the back of the fibre backbone which will also be offered to existing residential developments in due course.
The Rabie Group would be one of the first beneficiaries of Century City Connect’s services which are expected to be operational from October.
Publisher: eProp
Source: RPG
