ParkMore

Describe ParkMore here.

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Telecoms/3128.html

Parkmore residents are planning to build a fibre network that will cut telecoms costs and boost crime prevention

Residents of Parkmore, the affluent northern Johannesburg suburb, are planning to build a R13.5 million fibreoptic cable network that will dramatically cut telecoms costs and boost crime prevention in the area.

The network will be used for installing surveillance cameras. Additional capacity will provide residents with high-speed internet and services like voice over internet and video on demand at lower costs.

Although the primary objective of the project is to facilitate better policing in the area, it will also render the services of Telkom redundant.

Telecoms costs for residents are expected to drop by about 40 percent, while video on demand facilities will mean that residents no longer have to hire movies from the local video shop; they can simply watch them from the video on demand server attached to the network.

If this project goes to launch, it will be South Africa's first fibreoptic cable network dedicated exclusively to a residential suburb.

Knysna, the millionaire's paradise in the Western Cape, has a wireless network facility that has also reduced telecoms costs for its residents, while the residents of Midrand Estates can buy all their telecoms services from their community network.

Neil Pryce, a member of the Parkmore Community Association, said the fibreoptic network project needed support from 51 percent of the residents to proceed.

Most of the residents who attended last week's meeting to discuss the project had voted in favour of it, he said.

The suburb's 1 289 households will have to fork out about R1 050 monthly if the project is to be viable.

For the first three years, R300 of this amount will pay for the network, which will cost about R10.5 million.

Smartvillage, a subsidiary of Mweb, will build the aerial fibreoptic cabling network. The cable will run from pole to pole, rather than underground, to save money.

An underground cable would have cost as much as R30 million to install.

Residents will own the network after three years.

About R200 of the monthly fee will be for internet access, R100 for telephone lines and the rest will pay for CCTV cameras and staff to monitor them, and a security company to patrol the area.

Regulatory changes have resulted in communities entering into partnerships with licensed, value-added service providers to build networks to cut costs and compete with Telkom.

Rudolf Muller, the founder of MyADSL, said the main disadvantage for these initiatives was the expensive local and international bandwidth.

That cost is expected to come down next year, when companies such as Seacom enter the market.

Comments

costs
Smartvillage are running FTTH or fiber to each house it would seem. FTTH is a marketing ploy, if the community don't control the network. Verizon in the USA don't allow their clients a 1gig access to the Internet. The fiber CPE switches alone are listed as R8000 compared with the VDSL2+ modem DsLam CPEs which you can get for R1000 from SA DslamDistributors.

links
NaspersProblem, http://www.parkmore.co.za/

http://www.smartvillage.co.za owned by Naspers