Even before the Covid-19 pandemic triggered a sudden steep rise in national and international bandwidth demand in South Africa, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), wireless ISPs (WISPs) and mobile network operators (MNOs) were competing fiercely for enterprise and domestic customers seeking ever-lower cost and more reliable connectivity.
The competition has now become even more intense, with increasing numbers of South Africans needing high bandwidth connectivity from home to support remote working, and their social networking and online entertainment needs.
So, the news that award-winning capacity wholesaler WIOCC is continuing its policy of not competing for end-user business should be very welcome to all existing players. Instead of competing with them, WIOCC will continue to invest the proceeds from its sales in South Africa into further enhancing the capacity, reach and capabilities of its hyperscale network – for the benefit of all its customers.
Unique Connectivity Proposition
This committed pan-African wholesaler has an 11-year track record of investing in Africa’s hyperscale infrastructure. Its recent multi-million dollar investments in South Africa mean that ISPs, WISPs and MNOs, and international Over The Top players (OTTs) and content providers, can now enjoy fast, flexible, robust and easily-scalable connectivity solutions delivered over a unique, 16Tbps-ready, Optical Transport Network (OTN)-enabled hyperscale network.
This unique connectivity proposition comprises:
• a hyperscale national backbone
• an extensive network of 30 national and 70 on-net Metro PoPs
• our new North-East fibre ring with PoPs in Polokwane, Nelspruit and Musina
• expanded metropolitan area coverage, now including Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Durban, East London, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth and Pretoria
• extended cross-border connectivity into Botswana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe
• international connectivity to key global hubs via east and west coast submarine cables.
In addition, WIOCC’s clients can also take advantage of OTN technology to cost-effectively configure wavelengths to carry different protocols, such as ethernet, SDH and IP, to end-users over a single service path.
Channel Partner programme
Such is its commitment to being exclusively wholesale that WIOCC has a Channel Partner programme in which it works with ISPs and WISPs to help them target the important enterprise channel with ever-more competitive offerings.
“WIOCC have come top of our internal ‘Best Strategic Tech Partner’ list for the past two years. Key to this has been the nature of their engagement with us as a channel partner. I cannot think of a time where we have competed with each other and WIOCC are quick to defer business to the appropriate channel partner.”
– Owen Rogers, Broadlink
