The Baobab Fibre Project is well-underway in the Saldanha Bay municipal area, and aims to turn the area into the first authentic smart city in South Africa.
With most residents now having access to internet, thanks to the fibre project, the team implementing it answers some key questions to help guide locals.
Farhad Suleman, Zoom Fibre chief sales and marketing officer, explains why locals should care about fibre when other internet connectivity is working.
He says whether it is a business trying to service customers online or make use of cloud-based software, a child at school needing to do research or stream educational material, or a parent working remotely who needs the Microsoft Teams meeting to run flawlessly, connectivity is the lifeblood of the modern world.
Fast reliable internet is non-negotiable, Suleman added.
Zoom Fibre is providing the fibre infrastructure as part of its Baobab partnership with the municipality and Amoeba TSC.
According to Suleman fibre is the fastest internet in the world and by far the most consistent and reliable. This is why countries and cities around the world have built their connectivity and staked their futures on it. Fibre entails smart mobility and buildings, precision robotics and much more.
Fibre cables, Suleman says, send light pulses that transmit data at unbelievably high speeds around the world and back many times before one even finishes reading this sentence. The future everyone dreams of will be built on the back of fibre he says.
Another type of internet is called wireless, but Suleman explains there is some confusion between microwave wireless and LTE.
Microwave wireless is capable of delivering almost-fibre-like speed when everything is working properly and trees, buildings and weather conditions don’t interfere with the connection, he explained. Microwave wireless works with devices in homes that point to towers which all point at each other, and the whole infrastructure is underpinned by a fibre network.
Another type of wireless connectivity is LTE.
This is where a provider piggybacks off mobile providers’ base stations.
These are the same towers that provide cellphone coverage. This connectivity is convenient because it is mobile. It is not as fast as fibre and a drawback is that if many people use the network at peak times it tends to slow down, and if there are long power cuts and the base station’s batteries die, then the connectivity suffers. While LTE runs on the same network as cellphones, the data usage is more affordable than using cellphone data.
Then, says Suleman, there is ADSL, which many people still use. While these people may be happy with what they currently have it is previous-generation technology.
It relies on copper cables, which are at risk of being stolen. Copper is unable to support a modern digital world and certainly cannot underpin a smart city or deliver the speeds and low latency required by modern devices and streaming.
“Zoom Fibre is excited about the potential that fibre unlocks,” Suleman says. “It is a great privilege to lay the fibre network and open the doors of global connectivity to the people of this municipality. We believe it is in the best interest of all if they understand how different types of connections work. They’ll then understand all the fuss and make informed decisions.”
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Quelle/Source: Netwerk24, 05.12.2022
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