New entrant, ECN, is fighting the good fight to bring improved services, at reasonable costs, to customers.
“In a well-functioning market, competing suppliers are incentivised to reduce costs and innovate with new products and services. Unfortunately the current regulatory roadblock is preventing this from happening and the ultimate loser is the consumer. ICASA has finally issued the new electronic communications licenses.
A general trend is for IP to be adopted as the common protocol of choice for converged next generation networks (NGN). ECN has developed an IP based NGN using a range of technologies including copper wire, fibre circuits, WiMAX and digital microwave. “NGN’s are based on a genuinely innovative set of technologies that are transforming the way businesses communicate. The key to this lies in the difference between what legacy networks and NGN’s have to offer.
“ECN has used an ‘asset light’ approach to build its NGN, adopting the view that capital should only be invested in the network at the points of highest value. To this end, ECN owns the routing and switching platforms, but leases layer 1 physical capacity from infrastructure providers, such as Dark Fibre Africa or Broadlinks for example,” says Mike Britz, ECN COO.
“This asset light model incorporates the objectivity required to provide the network solution that most closely fits our customer’s requirement
