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Presented by DFA

Reliable fibre connectivity will shape workplaces of the future

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Millions of people have had to make a rapid shift in the way they work amid the COVID-19- crisis.

The global pandemic has catapulted the world into trying and testing the effectiveness of digital remote workplaces, and in South Africa it has been no different.

From setting up remote workstations to stepping into the virtual office every day, many South Africans across the country have been able to carry on with their day-to-day work activities through one common denominator – connectivity.

The technologies that make these virtual workspaces possible require high-speed, reliable Internet connectivity. Remote working and these virtual workspaces have resulted in significant increases in data traffic over South Africa’s Internet infrastructure since the implementation of the COVID-19 national lockdown.

The lockdown may have served to accelerate a more permanent transition towards remote working and a virtual-office culture, which means connectivity will have to keep up.

Dark Fibre Africa

One of the companies which provides the connectivity needed for remote working in South Africa is Dark Fibre Africa (DFA).

As a leading open-access fibre connectivity provider, the company finances, builds, installs, manages, and maintains a world-class fibre network to transmit metro and long-haul telecommunications traffic.

Executive of Strategy, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Innovation at DFA, Vino Govender, explained how fibre infrastructure will play a key role in the success of virtual workspaces in future. “Connectivity will enable the blending of the physical world with the digital world into a single entity that is going to thoroughly change the way we work and do business,” Govender said.

DFA has also experienced this shift in its business operations, with its head office and all its regional offices having moved to remote working and virtual workspaces. Throughout this transition, we have maintained our network uptime and availability levels and have continued to deliver links that required optical build.

The network operations centre (NOC), which is at the heart DFA’s network assurance, has also operated succesfully using remote agents and remote-support technologies. “Perhaps one of the most significant increases we have experienced is on the employee engagement front. Weekly real-time virtual town-hall sessions with the exco and all of the staff, has contributed significantly to this,” adds Govender.

Technologies

Govender explained that COVID-19 has also forced companies to place greater emphasis on their digital transformation strategies, resulting in the acceleration of related programmes and initiatives.

The deployment of emerging technologies, such as robotic process automation, cloud computing, big data, big data analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT) – all with the objective of improving customer experience, enhancing operational efficiency, and supporting seamless remote working and virtual work spaces – will further drive the demand for connectivity.

These will enable industries and businesses across different verticals to deliver services much more efficiently to the markets that they serve.

Fibre is the answer

When you think about the amount of data traffic that 20 billion connected devices create, it’s hard to picture how these volumes can be supported. “Emerging technologies and the applications that they enable are highly dependent on the underlying infrastructure,” Govender explained. The backend of the devices that we depend on for day-to-day activities will always need reliable, high-speed connectivity that only fibre can give.

Fibre networks will ultimately enable us to connect a growing number of intelligent and internet-enabled technologies as well as allow businesses to effectively utilise cloud-based services. In South Africa, fibre to the business (FTTB) deployment is on an upward trajectory while network stability and high-speed connectivity, which are critical to the success of the digital workspace, are better than ever.

We have responded to the current crisis by increasing the bandwidth for our active connectivity services at zero charge to support organizations’ increased use of digital applications and platforms during this time.

Beating the barriers

According to Govender, the biggest barrier to connectivity in South Africa is the costliness of rolling out fibre infrastructure. Open-access fibre, which eliminates the duplication of infrastructure, is therefore the most viable model that will allow connectivity to scale in South Africa. “The challenge that we have to overcome is to get the capital-intensive infrastructure behind digital technologies to rural areas,” Govender said.

Govender proposed that connecting the country should be a collective effort. “There needs to be participation from both the private and public sector to extend infrastructure to rural areas,” he said. This needs a holistic approach, which includes looking at policy, network technologies, applications, devices, demand-side stimulation, supply-side interventions, cohesive use of existing infrastructure, capacity building, physical infrastructure security, and funding mechanisms.

The DFA impact

The COVID-19 lockdown has shown that the successful transition to virtual offices of the future will require extensive investment in digital infrastructure such as fibre.

Since its establishment in 2007 DFA has deployed over 14,000 km of ducting infrastructure in major metros, secondary cities, and smaller towns. Its network runs with an industry-leading uptime of 99.98%. DFA leases its secure transmission and backbone fibre infrastructure and provides associated connectivity services to a variety of entities, including:

Click here to learn more about connectivity infrastructure solutions from Dark Fibre Africa.

This article was published in partnership with DFA.