Source: Francois Jonker, Stefanutti Stocks Roads & Earthworks
The South-African telecommunication market has gone through significant changes over the past two years and with it the demand for fibre-optic infrastructure. Currently, each of the five major service providers (Dark Fibre Africa, Neotel, Vodacom, MTN, Cell-C) is putting around 2 000km of fibre-optics in place each year.
Stefanutti Stocks Roads & Earthworks has been undertaking fibre-optic installations for client Dark Fibre for the last 24 months. As newcomers to this capability in 2009, the division started with a few small projects and adapted, developed and grew their skills to the point where they are now very competitive in the industry.
“We are installing the most innovative and up to date fibre optic system in the world,” said Francois Jonker of the Roads & Earthworks division. “The new 665 micro fibre-optic that we are currently installing has the capacity to take 3 million voice calls simultaneously compared to the old fibre that can only handle 300 000 voice calls.”
Fibre has a number of important advantages over a wireless connection – it is not weather dependant, is
100% reliable and the new micro-fibre has a much higher capacity for transferring data than ‘normal’ methods – which explains the ‘whoooosh’ used in recent Cell-C advertisements. As the infrastructure or backbone for the fibre-optic networks is still in the early stages, only larger corporates with high data usage are being connected, with the ultimate goal being to bring fibre to the home.
Eighty per cent of the entire fibre optic networks installation consists of civil work, including hand excavation of trenches (0.45m wide x 1m deep), placing of hand holes, backfilling of trenches and re-instating the trenches to a similar or better condition. As most of the work takes place in CBD or Metro areas, the multitude of services and obstacles encountered during hand excavation slow down progress to half the normal hand excavation production rate and in some cases even less.
Working within the CBD and Metro area also means that certain permissions and wayleave applications need to be approved prior to any work commencing. Wayleave conditions prohibit more than 300m of open trenches at any given time. “One of the biggest contributors to being successful within this sector is our pre-roll-out planning, and programming,” says Francois. “When one of our routes crosses a SANRAL road, national road or Metrorail bridge, the application process can take months.”
To date a total of about 70km of metro/CBD area fibre optic ducting has been completed with a further allocated 140km to be completed before the end of December 2011. “Our current capacity is between 10-15km per month, however we are increasing our capability to complete 20-30km monthly,” said Francois. “Currently we are about three weeks ahead of programme on the three routes that are in progress.”
There are exciting developments and opportunities within the fibre-optic sector for the division, and Stefanutti Stocks Roads & Earthworks is looking forward to actively participating in the roll out of the back bone across South Africa and Southern Africa.
For further information, please contact the Stefanutti Stocks Roads, Earthworks and Mining Services business unit at Tel: +27 11 552 4200 |