Terrestrial connectivity service provider Workonline Communications has built its success on a combination of highly skilled engineers and strong partnerships with other important network providers.  One of these providers is FibreCo Telecommunications, who assists Workonline with the expansion of their South African national network into new areas, allowing Workonline to provide its unique solutions to an ever-growing customer base.

FibreCo is one of South Africa’s largest fibre network operators. Workonline has forged a partnership with FibreCo to provide redundancy for some of Workonline’s major backbone routes. This redundancy is critical for the reliable supply of wholesale national connectivity services.

“The partnership with FibreCo allows Workonline to increase the resilience of its core network and to deliver wholesale and transmission services to the demanding Workonline wholesale client base,” says Edward Lawrence, Director – Business Development at Workonline Communications.

Workonline chose FibreCo because of their bespoke service levels and technical flexibility, which was a head above what other fibre network providers could offer. This has allowed Workonline to easily provision a variety of new cutting-edge, carrier-grade services to its wholesale clients. This feeds into Workonline’s wider shift into the delivery of increasingly specialised services, such as Optical Transport Networking (OTN).

Workonline first came onto the FibreCo network in mid-2014 and expects the relationship to develop further, from strength to strength.

“As the FibreCo network grows from Cape Town to Durban it will eventually provide the shortest route between the east coast and west coast submarine cables, which will result in the lowest latency and the best speeds for applicable services,” says Lawrence. “The result will mean that several underserviced areas will become part of the national fibre grid. FibreCo has also assisted Workonline in providing services into areas where the high cost of transmission previously made it unfeasible for Workonline to expand its network. New clients in these areas can now tick their three most important boxes: high speed, low latency and increased resiliency, all this while keeping costs as low as possible.”

“FibreCo prides itself on its responsive and flexible approach, allowing us to customise specific commercial and technical solutions for clients.  We see this client responsiveness as an important differentiator,” says Arif Hussain, CEO of FibreCo Telecommunications. “As FibreCo’s open-access fibre network footprint continues to extend across the country even more companies will benefit from Workonline Communications’ unique services.”

By open-access network, FibreCo means that all clients can have access on the same basis. FibreCo’s model facilitates multiple operators, service providers and businesses acquiring their own fibre allowing them to deliver a wider choice of products to their customers - managed by a single entity.