Our previous blog was about the ADSL network and how it works.
Thought we would give you some detail on the Fiber network in South Africa. As Intense Broadband, we can supply fiber to your business and in some cases your home through one of our suppliers.
Fiber Optic cabling has grown substantially over the last 5 years or so and hopefully in the next 5 years there would be fiber to the home!
Firstly what is Fiber:
An optical fiber (or optical fibre) is a flexible, transparent fiber made of high quality extruded glass (silica) or plastic, slightly thicker than a human hair. It can function as a waveguide, or “light pipe”,[1] to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber.[2] Power over Fiber (PoF) optic cables can also work to deliver an electric current for low-power electric devices.[3] The field of applied science and engineeringconcerned with the design and application of optical fibers is known as fiber optics.
Optical fibers typically include a transparent core surrounded by a transparent cladding material with a lower index of refraction. Light is kept in the core by total internal reflection. This causes the fiber to act as a waveguide. Fibers that support many propagation paths ortransverse modes are called multi-mode fibers (MMF), while those that only support a single mode are called single-mode fibers (SMF). Multi-mode fibers generally have a wider core diameter, and are used for short-distance communication links and for applications where high power must be transmitted. Single-mode fibers are used for most communication links longer than 1,000 meters (3,300 ft).
Joining lengths of optical fiber is more complex than joining electrical wire or cable. The ends of the fibers must be carefully cleaved, and then carefully spliced together with the cores perfectly aligned. A mechanical splice holds the ends of the fibers together mechanically, while fusion splicing uses heat to fuse the ends of the fibers together. Special optical fiber connectors for temporary or semi-permanent connections are also available.
Who does Fiber in South Africa?
Neotel:
Our optical fibre technology also takes advantage of the latest advances in the science of photonics and opto-electronics. On major routes, every optical fibre is lit with a rainbow of coloured lasers (Dense Wave Division Multiplexing or DWDM), each carrying a separate high bandwidth signal at several Gigabits per second (billions of bits per second). Adding the ability to switch these optical signals from one path to another at key nodes around the country (Optical Cross Connects) creates a network resilient to fibre breaks
DFA (Dark Fiber Africa):
Its state-of-the-art, secure ducting infrastructure, enables large users of communications capacity to enjoy logical separation and ownership of communications capability, whilst sharing the same physical right of way access routes with their customers. DFA is responsible for financing and constructing ducting infrastructure and making discrete fibre cables available to individual operators of telecommunications services. These operators are then responsible for “lighting” the fibre and onward selling the capacity to their customers.
There are other players like Vodacom, MTN, WBS and some more smaller players.
As Intense Broadband we can supply Fiber through the above suppliers. Intense Broadband can give you the speed and the competitive pricing that you as a client require.
Another interesting figure to look at is the Fiber network of undersea cabling coming into South Africa:
