Telcos peek into Aladdin's cave

The impending commercial activation of Seacom and updates from several other undersea cables have the telcos making moves to take advantage of what is coming.
Over the last few weeks, some of the more well-known telcos, including Vox Telecom and Internet Solutions, have released a spate of products positioned to use high-speed broadband expected to hit local shores over the next few years.

Huge Group executive chairman Anton Potgieter says the incoming capacity, while not cutting the price of services, will bring new services that were previously unavailable on the limited capacity in SA.

Huge has an overview of the market since the company provides managed solutions using the available telecoms operators and their infrastructure. According to Potgieter, for the telcos, the next big step will be in the video conferencing space. He points to Vox's new product released yesterday, Eyeris.

Eyeris is a high-definition (HD) video conferencing solution, which will use the back-end hosted infrastructure of Vox Orion and Vox DataPro. Industry watchers have questioned the capability to run high-definition video conferencing across local networks; however, the company will combine it with Fishbone, its line binding technology, to increase capacity for the solution.

Even with the expected bandwidth, SA still has a long way to go before it sees services that have become commonplace in cutting-edge markets. “We are still some time away from things like HD streaming video, which we have seen in several established countries.”

Internet Solutions (IS) has been quickly racking up the number of new available products, including a business product for roaming, which allows customers to connect to several WiFi hotspots across the globe.

Despite the mass of exciting products on the horizon, the general consensus is that it will take some time before telecoms prices will actually drop.