Workonline joins FibreCo network
FibreCo - South Africa's most ambitious open-access, nation-wide fibre optic network owner is proud to welcome Workonline Communications as a new client. Workonline Communications is a leading provider of tailormade telecommunication services to the wholesale market, as well as critical business communication solutions for medium and large enterprises.
Through this new relationship Workonline will be making use of FibreCo's brand new, state-of-the-art fibre optic link between Cape Town and Johannesburg. Expansion plans are in place to extend FibreCo's network reach further across South Africa, starting with other major centres. Workonline also plans to make use of FibreCo's next major network build along the N2 coastal route between Cape Town and Durban, which is expected to connect Gauteng to the submarine cable landing stations on the East and West coast via a fully-redundant ring by the end of 2016. This future link will not only provide critical redundancy for the other major backbone routes operating today, but will also link several underserviced areas back into the national fibre grid.
"We pride ourselves on the stability, resilience and redundancy provisions of our network. The calibre of our customers requires that we operate according to the highest standards across multiple geographical locations in sub Saharan-Africa and abroad. Making use of FibreCo's network, along with the reach of our other partners, ensures that we continue to evolve and offer the best quality services to our customers at all times." says Edward Lawrence, Director - Business Development, Workonline
Founded in Cape Town in 2006, Workonline is a privately owned company that prides itself on being a trusted advisor to its customers, which include some of the world's largest telecommunication companies. Workonline Communications continues to design innovative commercial and technical solutions that have given them an edge and resulted in significant growth over the past eight years.
"These are exciting times for broadband users in South Africa, whether they are enterprises or ordinary residents," says Arif Hussain, CEO of FibreCo Telecommunications. "As a result of the availability of open-access, high speed fibre-optic connectivity across the country through FibreCo and is partners, broadband users are already seeing the benefit in the form of greater choice, improved affordability and innovation in service delivery through service providers such as Workonline Communications".
FibreCo aims to enable more affordable and wider access to broadband services as they continue to build across the country. The FibreCo fibre optic network ensures secure high speed, high capacity and low latency connectivity.
New innovative partnerships
We are proud to announce that Workonline Communications (Pty) Ltd has been chosen by Level3 Communications LLC as their preferred terrestrial partner in South Africa.
The joint strengths of the Workonline Communications Southern African network and the Level3 Communications international network, combined through this special partnership, has resulted in Workonline Communications now being able to offer best of breed connectivity and communication solutions tailored to meet the needs of the mid to large enterprise market in South Africa.
Our partnership is based on providing innovative tailor made connectivity and communication solutions in line with global standards, at competitive prices, while being backed by stringent service level agreements.
For more information on these services, please send an email to sales@workonline.africa with a brief of your requirements and one of our experienced business developers will contact you.
Managed Carrier Services
As the quantity of National as well as International transport services in South Africa increases, with new carriers entering the market to fulfil the bandwidth needs of South African businesses, Workonline has manoeuvred into the niche space of being able to offer end to end managed wholesale solutions. This is a blend of our Managed Solutions under Enterprise Services, and Carrier Supporting Carrier Solutions under Carrier Services.
Due to our modular approach to network design, this blend of services has allowed us to offer core network management services assisting new carriers to be formed without necessarily having the in-depth skill and staff required to manage a core network. This also severely reduces the barrier to entry for new carriers to ensure that the market remains competitive and focused on true value, and assists medium and large enterprises to regain control of their core networks.
These new carriers or medium and large enterprises are now able to depend on the Workonline 24/7 NOC and heavily peered core IP network to offer best of breed services to their clients while they focus on increasing volumes to get to a stage where they can manage their own core network and fall into the pure Carrier Services division of Workonline.
We encourage these clients to build flexibility into the very core of their network design by applying for their own range of IPv4 or IPv6 public address space and Autonomous System Numbers (ASN), to ensure that they are able to remain competitive and independent as their business grows.
With the market opening and monopolies struggling to retain unhappy clients who previously had little alternatives, entrepreneurial concepts such as these are allowing IT service providers to diversify and generate new revenue streams from their existing client base.
Feel free to contact us for more information and case studies on how this model can benefit your business.
Launch of Trop-X
Being passionate about the growth and development of sub-Saharan Africa through education, employment, and financial inclusion, Workonline is pleased to announce the recent addition of the Seychelles exchange,Trop-X, to our growing list of special service clients.
In brief, Trop-X is the licensed multi-asset, multi-currency securities exchange, providing for and regulating the trading of equities, debt, derivatives, FX products and more. Trop-X was created to serve the local Seychelles and broader regional markets with an initial special focus on Southern Africa.
We share the belief that lower cost and more technologically advanced financial exchanges will have a positive socio economic impact in sub-Saharan Africa. The creation of this new exchange, as well as others to come, includes a new market construct for listed Venture Capital and SMME's to facilitate economic growth and job creation, while being aligned to government policy.
In line with the above, joining ABN??ç?ûs Samantha Loring for more is Ed Tuohy, COO at the South African Financial Exchange:
NamFin-X, has also recently received approval to establish a second exchange in Namibia.
Cape Town office expansion
Due to our growing staff complement, as well as to provide our NOC (network operations centre) with a superior connectivity solution, we have moved our Cape Town office to a new location.
We are now located on the 5th floor of 30 Waterkant Street opposite CINX (Cape Town Internet Exchange) and we trust we will remain so for the next 5 years to come.
Apart from offering our engineers a latency of 1 ms and network and speeds of up to 1 Gbps to our core, our new home in Cape Town will soon be completely fitted out to our specifications.
Please feel free to setup an appointment to pop by and have a coffee.
Business development team
We are proud to announce the addition of two members of staff to our business development team over the last quarter.
Their main areas of focus will be to open new markets for us and assist with the management of our rapidly growing corporate client base, whilst their wealth of skill and experience in the market positioning of various NSP (network service provider) related services fits perfectly into one of our areas of focus for the year ahead.
Both of these individuals have long term vision, serious motivation, and a passion for perfection. We welcome them to our team with open arms, and look forward to a long and mutually beneficial relationship over the years to come.
Fastest broadband network
Workonline Communications has been voted the 9th fastest broadband network in South Africa by the independent Mybroadband forum.
Please see the following link to the article in question:
MyBroadband list of fastest broadband networks in South Africa
The results are based on Ookla's Speedtest.net results, which due to the numerous South African servers deployed by Speedtest.net, are seen as the most accurate measure of local broadband performance.
Workonline constantly strives for faster speeds and the greatest reliability possible, and we hence attribute this positive report to our highly skilled, passionate, and driven team of engineers.
Launch of Carrier Wireless
Realising the need for a stable and well managed wireless access solution for our enterprise and wholesale clients, we conducted research into many options available in the Western Cape. Our research was eye opening, and not one of the wireless core networks we reviewed met our stringent demands for extreme redundancy, high capacity and low latency offered at a realistic price.
Due to increasing demand, we made the decision to design and build our own wireless network on a CSC (carrier supporting carrier) model. In order to achieve this, we entered into a partnership with an existing reputable wireless service provider to complete the various installations of our high sites, and the Carrier Wireless partnership was formed.
Having taken 3 months to build, and using best of breed equipment such as APC for UPSs and power cleansing, Rittal custom made cabinets, Cisco switching and routing, amongst others, and we are happy with the results.
The Carrier Wireless network has been live for 2 weeks, and bar a few small teething issues, all is running very smoothly. 4 enterprise clients have already been deployed, and a few Wireless Internet Service Providers are considering outsourcing the management of their backbone to Carrier Wireless.
We look forward to assisting carriers with their core wireless network requirements through becoming the core wireless network provider of choice in the Western Cape, before deploying in Gauteng in the months to come.
Johannesburg expansion
Being a major hub for Southern African business, Workonline has always had a skeleton team present in Johannesburg; however the time has come for us to expand our presence in Johannesburg.
Our expansion has occurred both at a technical as well as an operational level. From a technical perspective, we have expended our primary and DR sites to allow for an extended set of services to be delivered from our JHB POPs, and we are now also peered at JINX. From an operational perspective, we have settled into our offices on Linden Road in Sandton. Please do feel free to get in touch with us if you feel like coming by to visit us.
This expansion is a show of our faith in South Africa's economy, and reflects our confidence in the bright