Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa June 2013 | Page 74

SMART LIVING

BY ANGELIQUE REDMOND

Get More For Less
With open access networks

S

mart Village, the Multichoice-owned
company specialising in large-scale
deployments of high-capacity “Fibreto-the-Home” multi-service networks, will
soon be promoting an open access network to
ISPs in their 56 residential estates throughout
South Africa. As the only company currently
able to provide a truly converged multimedia
and telecommunication service solution via
a single access point to the residential and
commercial sector, Smart Village is considered
to be a pioneer in the field.

What is an open access network?
As the name implies, Open Access Networks
(OAN) refers to telecommunication networks
that is open to allow suitable and authorised
Independent Service Providers (ISPs) to deliver
services to end-users. “Opening our networks
will allow other players such as Telkom, Neotel,
MWeb etc. to provide telephone or broadband
Internet services to residents making use of our
network architecture,” explains Smart Village
Managing Director, Chris Van der Walt.
One of the benef its of an Open Access
Network is creating a genuinely competitive
environment in the market for end user
broadband services. “Our customers will now
also enjoy the benefits of choosing their own
services and service vendors”, Van der Walt
says, adding that the Waterfall Development
in Gauteng is the first open access network
operated by Smart Village on this basis. “Our
other residential estates are soon to follow
this trend”.
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June 2013 SA Real Estate Investor

In contrast to traditional municipal networks
where the municipality owns the network and
there is only one service provider, the open
access model allows multiple service providers
to compete over the same network at wholesale
prices. This allows service providers to make
money in the short-term, and the municipality
or cooperative to recoup its costs over the
long-term. The build-out and infrastructure is
typically financed through low-cost bonds.
Open access networks have proven successful
in parts of the United States, Europe and
Asia. One of the best-known and most mature
OANs is in Västerås, Sweden, a city of about
40,000 homes. The Västerås OAN has dozens
of providers, and more than a hundred services
available to users. During the past years a large
number of OANs have spread all over Sweden,
especially in smaller municipalities (see e.g.
Säffle and Hudiksvall). In the US, open access
networks like municipality owned The Wired
Road[1] in Virginia have been able to attract
both local and regional service providers
quickly. This has resulted in the cost of Internet
access and telephone service for business users
in The Wired Road service area to decline by
fifty to seventy percent due to the increased
competition between providers. This OAN
provides open access transport to any service
provider that meets minimum technical and
financial qualifications, including allowing
existing providers to supply enhanced services,
however it does sell services itself and therefore
does not compete with private sector providers.
Australia and Singapore also have open access

networks based on f ibre to the home. In
Australia, the leading open access provider
currently is Opticomm,[2] who have been
delivering services to over sixty communities
since the mid-2000s. Australia also has the
recently formed government owned corporation
NBN Co Limited, who are creating the National
Broadband Network to provide open access
fibre to the node at one gigabit per second for
more than ninety-three percent of homes and
businesses in the country, and fixed wireless and
satellite technologies with a minimum speed of
twelve megabits per second to the remainder of
the population.
“We have a strong national footprint in lastmile infrastructure, with over 11 000 homes and
businesses already connected and enjoying our
fully integrated multi-media, telecommunication
(voice and data) and IP based solutions,” explains
Van der Walt.
Customers living in residential estates that are
on the Smart Village networks, will continue
to enjoy Quadra-Play® range of value added
services, such as telco-grade VoIP telephony
services, high speed broadband access, TV and
video services and including rich multi-media IP
services.
Want to know more about how you can enjoy
an open access network? Don’t miss the July
edition of REIMAG, where we explore the world
of networks and access tailored to you.

RESOURCES
Smart Village

www.reimag.co.za