JOHANNESBURG-Telkom SA, the national telecommunications provider in South Africa, formally has launched the nation’s first commercial digital enhanced cordless telecommunications (DECT) system at Sandfontein, a village near Rustenburg in the North West Province. It is the first step in providing 145,000 rural South Africans access to telephones by the end of the year. It is also Telkom’s first move from traditional copper cabling to radio-based systems.
Speaking at the launch, Telkom Chairman Advocate Dikgang Moseneke said 70 DECT projects were projected to be finished by the end of March, followed by another 450 projects in the nine months to December. Between 600 and 1,000 villages currently without telephone service are expected to benefit from DECT technologies by the end of the year.
“Although 95 percent of the DECT systems planned for 1998 will be installed in underserviced communities (mainly earmarked for KwaZulu-Natal, the Eastern Cape and Northern Province), we also intend using the system for high-density areas where existing infrastructure is inadequate to meet demand for services,” said Moseneke.
He added that wireless technologies such as DECT tend to be more reliable than copper because of the greater resistance to adverse weather conditions. Wireless systems also are impervious to cable theft, he said.
Telkom’s choice of DECT as a wireless local loop technology has caused a stir among South African suppliers because many of them believe manufacturers abroad have been dumping DECT systems and obsolete technologies in African markets.
Telkom awarded a R2-billion (US$405 million) contract for radio systems to Alcatel Altech Telecoms and Lucent Technologies Inc. last year. This followed the deployment of four field trials in September 1996:
The stand-alone Ericsson DRA 1900 system in Kwa-Mashu in Kwazulu Natal;
The stand-alone Siemens DECTlink system in Machadorp in Mpumalanga;
The Lucent IRT 2000, a TDMA (time division multiple access) system with DECT tail, in Bochum in the Northern Province; and
The Alcatel A9800, a TDMA system with DECT tail, in Bochum in the Northern Province.
The project awarded to Alcatel and Lucent represents the world’s biggest single rollout of DECT systems. Wilbur Crossley, Telkom’s managing executive of technology and networks at Telkom, said DECT technology would make up as much as 30 percent of Telkom’s total 3-million line rollout program.
License requirements demand that Telkom meet stringent customer service and delivery targets during a five- to six-year exclusivity period or pay financial penalties. These include the delivery of 2.8 million lines by March 2002.
