[afnog] E1 Terrestrial Providers in Africa

[nishal goburdhan]

On 26 Jan 2009, at 5:48 PM, Christian Martin wrote:

> Hello,

hi,


>
>
> I am interested in acquiring terrestrial E1 Internet access in the  
> following locations:
>
> Lagos, Nigeria
> Marrakech, Morocco
> Nairobi, Kenya
> Durban, South Africa
>
> I am having great difficulty in even finding a provider that is  
> willing to return an email for a request for quotation.  Can someone  
> on this list please advise?

you shouldn't have problems in all but nairobi (as noah mentioned,  
in .ke you'll need to use satellite based services for now).

you can find a list of most of the south african ISPs here:  http://www.ispmap.org.za
if nothing else, that should give you a contact/website pointers to  
each.
unfortunately my google-fu couldn't turn up a more accurate (read:   
primarily durban) list;  not all of the ones listed here may have  
nationwide networks (or even operate in durban).

depending on what other information you'd want on the networks in  
question:
- there's no local IX that i know of, in durban;  you can get stats of  
the johannesburg IX here:  http://stats.jinx.net.za/
- if you want to poke around in at least one ISP's view of what's  
considered 'South African Prefixes', you can look here:  telnet://route-server.is.co.za
- some ISPs are listed on peeringdb.com  (limited use, i guess if  
you're not looking for peers)

for provisioning of the telco circuit (for now) you've got options  
between
- telkom sa (the ex-incumbent).  their product listing page is:  http://www.telkom.co.za/common/allproducts/index.html 
.  durban still has extensive diginet rollout, though there are  
increasingly new installations of telkom's metro-e services.  please  
don't go ATM  :-)
- neotel;  the 2nd fixed line operator.  the product listing page  
you're probably looking for is:  http://www.neotel.co.za/neotel/view/neotel/en/page46603 
.
- the durban metro;  they've recently made metro-e services available  
to businesses inside the metro, using fibre owned by the city.  i  
don't have a URL unfortunately, but can try to dig more if you're  
interested in this.

legislation has very recently changed allowing more potential 'telco'  
providers;  however these are probably still your safest/easiest short- 
term terrestial bets.
i wouldn't look into signing any long term contracts ;)

hth - at least for durban.
--n.