A few weeks ago I met with two representatives of Vumatel (vumatel.co.za) about their company's plans to install optic fibre cables in Observatory. They asked for a meeting in my capacity as Ward 57 committee member.
Here's what I leant: Vuma (as they prefer to call it) is a private company that specialises in installing and operating 'FTTH' (Fibre To The Home') optic fibre networks. It has been very active in Johannesburg for few years, and has recently laid cables in the Seapoint area and the City Bowl. It has a fairly good industry reputation, and seems to know what its doing. The owners have private + debt funding (R3bn from Standard Bank I believe). Vuma's normal approach is lay optic fibre cables in ducts under the ground, and extend this to individual homes on the request of the home owner, or an ISP acting on the owner's behalf. But in Observatory they intend to string cable between the electricity poles. A different company called 'Fibrehoods' came to an agreement with the City a few months back to do this anywhere in Cape Town where there are suitable electricity poles; Vuma recently bought Fibrehoods and so have gained the rights to do this. Vuma's marketing approach is to try and get as many people as possible to "commit" to their service in advance; the flyers though our letterboxes are an effort to achieve this. They push for a non-binding "commitment" as an indication that sufficient members of a given community are potentially interested in their service, and then expect to "convert" at least 30% of the homes to fibre within a six month period. If you're not clear, then the advantages of using optic fibre cables are that: (1) optic fibres have far more capacity than Telkom copper cables (though few people can afford to use the capacity they are capable of delivering). This is what most of us think of as "speed" or Megabits per second or Mbps or just "megs"; (2) optic fibre cable has much lower levels of attenuation or signal strength loss; and (3) exhibits lower latency or "time delay" in sending a bit of digital data between you and where ever. Last (4) its not subject to electromagnetic interference, or affected by the weather. And it's pretty robust and stable -- it doesn't need much in the way of maintenance unless it gets broken. There are a few issues with the Vuma model that people should be aware of, if they are thinking about using the service. These won't matter to most people, but are worth documenting for the record. First, Vuma says that it is an 'open access' infrastructure provider. This means that it owns the optic fibre network, and lets ISPs use it to deliver an Internet service to you at your home. Vuma charges the ISP for the use of its optic fibre, and the ISP passes this charge on to you (the end user) along with the cost of the data that you use up. But its not really an infrastructure provider; actually it's an access network provider, as it operates an active network service over the fibre in a neighbourhood, and controls the "speed" (actually capacity) of each connection. The ISP simply provides the Internet bandwidth; the ISP has no control over the access line speed or network performance. So really you're becoming a customer of Vuma. If you have a problem with your service, you will have to talk to your ISP, who will then take it up with Vuma. Which puts you two steps away from the actual network operator. This is not a bad model; just that there is more to it than Vuma let on (at least to end users). BTW, Vuma will be "backhauling" the traffic from Observatory to the ISPs using the City's Metro Area network between the City's switching point at Salt River Fire Station and the ISP peering point at Teraco in Newlands. Needless to say, the City charges them to do this. The trenching that is currently under way along the north side of LMR is to extend the City's optic fibre network from Salt River through to Mowbray (though this work is not directly related to the Vuma marketing push). This cable will be used to connect up the Observatory library and the Metro Police Training Academy. I have a commitment from the project manager that the contractor will re-instate the whole pavement properly; this commitment has been made to Paddy Chapel as well. Second, stringing fibre on electricity poles is second-best to burying it under the ground. It's much more likely to be damaged, and customers will have a cable from their nearest pole to the roof of their house. More clutter in the sky above our streets. But on the other hand, we won't have the disruption of the every pavement being dug up to install the cable ducts (at least, not by Vuma. See below.) Third, and a consequence of point two: because Vuma is stringing its cables from the electricity poles, it can't install big enough cables to run a dedicated fibre pair to every house. Underground cables have 72 or 144 fibres per cable, so each house gets a dedicated pair. But aerial cables this big are too heavy to hang from the poles. So Vuma is going to use a different architecture, called a 'PON'. This stands for 'Passive Optical Network', which is a technology that uses unpowered optic fibre splitters to share a single fibre pair with multiple customers. It works OK, but it does put an upper limit on the capacity available to each house. Elsewhere, where Vuma has installed underground cables, they have used a point-to-point dedicated pair architecture, which is much better. As I say, these issues probably won't matter to most people, but its good to be aware of them. I have heard that another optic fibre provider called 'Octotel' ( octotel.co.za), which is associated with local ISP RSAWEB (rsaweb.co.za), is looking closely at Woodstock/Salt River/Observatory/Mowbray. Full disclosure: I am part owner of an ISP called Vanilla (vanilla.co.za), which provides point-to-point wireless Internet connections (as well as providing service over City-owned, Octatel and LightSpeed fibre where ever this is available). Vanilla has a good customer base in Observatory. I have not received any payment or incentive from Vumatel to promote or advertise its services. I hope this helps you all to understand what's going on, and help individuals to make an informed decision. If anyone has any questions about optic fibre networks, I'll do my best to answer them. Cheers, Mark Neville [email protected] 20 Nuttall Road, Observatory map.what3words.com/casket.triggered.largest 083 259 1723 021 447 3107 On 27 June 2017 at 16:39, Trevor Hughes <[email protected]> wrote: > SO I live in Howe and its currently being dug up and fibre laid - > apparently by the city - a few years ago the other side of Howe was > dug up for Neotel fibre . Dark Fibre Africa were the fibre guys and > the work was done by Plessey. Look how shitthe pavements are where > they retarred. > > I see they are busy trenching in Lower Main Road - who is going to > benefit and why aren't the other companies like Vumatel piggy backing > and laying fibre in the same trenches > > The pavements are going to look just as crap in three years time as > DFA/Plessey. > > Good enough for government work anyone? > > If this fibre is city or telkom, can we expect them to give a hoot > about anyone but themselves? > > Trev > > > On Tue, Jun 27, 2017 at 4:21 PM, Colin Theobald <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Yes I spoke to Mweb about that. The reason you got that email is because > > Openserve have one small part of Obs on their 'planned' coverage. It only > > appears to cover Strubens road from Durban road to just past Willow road > > (see http://www.openserve.co.za/open/fibre/). This is the only part of > obs > > that is in the 'planned' Openserve schedule and it's been there for more > > than a year with nothing happening. > > Mweb's marketing system only 'sees' suburbs. Not the actual streets and > > addresses. So the sms went out to everyone in obs for which they have > > marketing contact details. > > > > -- > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > OPS [Obsid Public Safety] - 24/7 control room > > > > TEL: 021-447-1066 or 072-063-1653 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > EMERGENCIES: 10111 > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > ONW email: [email protected] > > WEB: www.obswatch.org.za > > FACEBOOK: facebook.com/obswatch > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Other Useful Obs Numbers: obs.org.za/obsdir > > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > The Observatory Neighbourhood watch group. To post to this group, send > email > > to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > > [email protected]. For more options, visit this group > at > > https://groups.google.com/d/forum/obsnw?hl=en > > --- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > > "The Observatory Neighbourhood Watch" group. > > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > > email to [email protected]. > > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > OPS [Obsid Public Safety] - 24/7 control room > > TEL: 021-447-1066 or 072-063-1653 > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > EMERGENCIES: 10111 > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > ONW email: [email protected] > WEB: www.obswatch.org.za > FACEBOOK: facebook.com/obswatch > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > Other Useful Obs Numbers: obs.org.za/obsdir > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > The Observatory Neighbourhood watch group. To post to this group, send > email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send > email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this > group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/obsnw?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Observatory Neighbourhood Watch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected]. > To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > > -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- OPS [Obsid Public Safety] - 24/7 control room TEL: 021-447-1066 or 072-063-1653 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- EMERGENCIES: 10111 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ONW email: [email protected] WEB: www.obswatch.org.za FACEBOOK: facebook.com/obswatch ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Other Useful Obs Numbers: obs.org.za/obsdir You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups The Observatory Neighbourhood watch group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/obsnw?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Observatory Neighbourhood Watch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
