BT South Africa has announced that it has opened an international network traffic routing facility in Melkbosstrand, the landing point of the SAT-3 submarine cable in South Africa. The move is expected to strengthen BT’s position as a provider of networked IT services to multinational companies, both in South Africa and internationally. An accompanying press statement read: ‘The new infrastructure is of particular importance for the development of the regional and national economy. For example, Cape Town has established itself as a major global hub for call centres and is set to benefit greatly as BT introduces new services and solutions aimed at call centre operators’.
The new routing facility will be linked to Teraco, a vendor-neutral co-location site in Cape Town, through which other operators and customers will connect directly to BT’s network. Connectivity between the routing facility and Teraco will be provided by Dark Fibre Africa (DFA), an independent operator with a 600km stretch of fibre spanning Cape Town and the surrounding area. In 2009, BT was awarded individual Electronic Communications Services (i-ECS) and Electronic Communication Network Services (i-ECNS) licenses from telecoms regulator Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) as part of the wider deregulation of the domestic telecoms market.