Local devices set to harness broadband revolution
Companies are readying to serve the needs of a more connected South Africa
After many years of demanding better connections and greater bandwidth allowances South Africans are beginning to see improvement with numerous undersea fibre optic cables landing in the coming years believes Tellumat Telecoms.
South Africans are entering an integrated home browsing, communication and entertainment environment that is now beginning to compare with that of the developed world.
Tellumat Telecoms, a communications specialist in the Tellumat Group, is currently positioning itself to feed these broadband-enabled improvements. Bennie Langenhoven, managing executive of Tellumat Telecoms, says more equipment to better utilise this is on its way.
“Already it is about so much more than telephony, videoconferencing and browsing,” he says of Tellumat’s portfolios from European giants Sagem and Pirelli.
Langenhoven says many factors contribute to a fuller picture of the connected home:
New telco services – instead of pure voice and data, future services will include content (video on demand, IPTV), applications and network services such as disaster recovery (DR). This will result in more converged devices combining computing, media storage, television and video players in one connected device.
Alternative telco delivery models – hosting will grow in stature. This may relate to applications (personal computing), content (video, images and data) and services (DR and voice), which will have far-reaching significance for end-point devices, ranging from the PC and video screening device to home network infrastructure. In time, says Langenhoven, devices may devolve to low- or no-processing and even low-storage devices.
Although the biggest current demand is for basic picture-sharing, IPTV, and of course, web browsing, Langenhoven says gaming and other more advanced services will come into their own in due course, including targeted advertising, based on location-based services.
In the final analysis, telcos and technology suppliers are challenged as much as users to get ready for this exciting revolution.
