FibreCo has gone live on its open access dark fibre link along the N3 from Johannesburg to Durban including the subsea cable landing stations of Seacom and EASSy on the east coast.

Seacom will be one of FibreCo’s first customers.

The N3, Johannesburg to Durban, is a strategic link for FibreCo providing the shortest dark fibre route inter-connecting the regional data centres of Internet Solutions and Teraco as well as the Seacom and EASSy subsea cable systems. The route also provides connectivity to sites along the route including Germiston, Heidelberg, Warden, Harrismith, Ladysmith, Estcourt and Pietermaritzburg and the cable landing station in Mtunzini.

“Our continued investment in open access infrastructure enables us to respond to the growing needs of our clients.” says Simon Harvey, CEO FibreCo. “This investment provides a long awaited open access redundant dark fibre infrastructure to the existing connectivity making the multiple Tbps of Internet connectivity from the subsea cables more resilient.”

Venita Engelbrecht, head of technology at FibreCo, adds: “Our clients are able to lease dark fibre and connect using their own optical equipment, hosted at our built for purpose repeater sites, allowing complete flexibility of managing their own network. Alternatively, they can use FibreCo’s state-of-the-art 100Gbps DWDM network which provides connectivity between the key data centres and to the cable landing stations.”

“We are actively engaging with operators, system integrators, service providers and public-sector clients along the N3 who have shown tremendous and positive interest in FibreCo’s product offerings along this route,” says Stephen Petersen, sales manager at FibreCo.

Spanning more than 4 000km, FibreCo’s open access network consists of underground fibre routes, high speed optical equipment, carrier-grade Ethernet equipment and hosting and tower facilities interconnecting over 59 points of presence country-wide, including major data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London.