SEACOM ROLLS OUT SERVICES ALONG THE N1

CABLE company Seacom yesterday announced that it had rolled out services along the N1 connecting Joburg, Bloemfontein and Cape Town in the first phase of its national rollout, which would provide high-capacity internet and cloud service options. “These towns in the past had limited access to high-capacity internet and cloud service options,” it said. The move follows the acquisition of fibre provider FibreCo, which owns and operates a national fibre network providing infrastructure and connectivity services across South Africa, earlier this year. Seacom previously had capacity from Durban to Joburg. Capacity would be added to other key routes interconnecting Joburg, Bloemfontein, Durban, East London and Kimberley in the next phase of the rollout. “The N1 route traverses the spine of South Africa, and has become the backbone for current and future undersea cable systems, which land on the east and west coasts and connect major public cloud providers to the country’s major metros,” it said. Seacom said customers could benefit from a range of options, including end-to-end “express routes” connecting metros to major data centres, national long-distance services, as well as last-mile metro and town connectivity. “Upon initial activation, Bloemfontein and Worcester will immediately benefit from 100Gbps connectivity speeds, with Colesberg, Beaufort West, Laingsburg and Touws River connecting at 10Gbps.” Looking ahead, Seacom said the second phase of the N1 Light Up project would see additional towns connected along the route. “Our continued investment in open access infrastructure enables us to respond to the growing needs of our customers,” said Seacom chief executive Byron Clatterbuck. “This increases our open access redundant capacity to the existing connectivity making the multiple terabits-per-second of internet connectivity from the sub-sea cables more resilient.”