The evolution of connectivity

For the average South African 56 kb/s analogue dial-up is an outdated technology, but quite a few users are still stuck with it due to Telkom’s inability to provide better infrastructure in many areas. Many South Africans will (fondly or otherwise) remember the noise these modems made while negotiating the best signal, similar to that of a fax machine. As memorable was the sizable chunk of your monthly telephone bill dedicated to internet browsing, since normal call charges applied when you dialled-up to surf.

DigiNet
Historically, Telkom’s connectivity option which was targeted at businesses, consisted of a leased-line product called DigiNet. A fixed copper line, DigitNet initially offered starting speeds of 64 kb/s, which was only slightly faster than a 56 kb/s dialup connection. Businesses looking at a permanent fixed line solution had no other options but to pay a premium price for this product, which was simply not affordable for smaller businesses.

ADSL
More recently, things have started to change and connectivity options available to end-users have increased. ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line) provides faster data transmissions over the same copper line infrastructure used by analogue dial-up modems, with Telkom offering 384 kb/s, 512 kb/s and 1024 to 4096 kb/s ADSL coverage on 92% of its network (according to its 2008 operational review) as a “best-effort” service. Higher speeds (10 mb/s and 12 mb/s) are currently being trialed in specific areas. On the cellular side 14.4 mb/s 3G HSDPA (a mobile telecommunications standard) is offered by Vodacom and MTN.

Fibre
Recently MetroEthernet – a metropolitan area network based on the Ethernet standard with fibre speeds of up to 1 gb/s for the time being, with the probability of 10 gb/s in the future – became available from Neotel, Vodacom Business and Telkom. The aforementioned operators also provide fixed-line optical fibre connectivity for those lucky enough to be close to their provider.

FTTC
In future, FTTC (Fibre to the Curb) will replace all or part of the local loop – the demarcation point of the customer’s premises to the edge of the telecommunications provider’s network – with an optical fibre line, allowing for up to 10 gb/s connections. To put this in perspective, this is a technology aimed at end-users and is roughly 163 840 times faster than the starting speed of Telkom’s old DigiNet offering aimed at businesses!

The future
At the rate in which telecommunications technology has advanced over the past few years (roughly keeping to Moore’s Law), it is not surprising that there is talk of a totally connected world where everything from your cellphone to your automatic dogfeeder will be connected at truly affordable broadband speeds.