SOUTH AFRICA – Tejas Networks, an India-based telecommunications equipment maker has entered a strategic partnership with local ICT services provider Tsiko Africa Technologies to bring Tejas’s solutions to South Africa.
According to IT Web, The Bangalore-headquartered company is targeting the unconnected rural and peri-urban communities of the country while complementing the South Africa’s dawdling SA Connect project.
The partnership has resulted in the establishment of Tsiko Tejas Africa, a South African company that will be owned by Tsiko Africa Technologies and deliver a range of broadband-based technology solutions in the local market.
The pact will enable Tsiko Tejas Africa to utilise Tejas Networks’ metro optical and backbone products, setting up local equipment assembly and testing facilities for these products, and extend Tejas’s technical, marketing and sales support to its customers.
Lavine Singh, CEO of Tsiko Africa Technologies, said, “Tsiko Tejas is very keen to work closely with the South African government on the ambitious SA Connect project and provide direction on how best to optimally utilise backhaul connectivity currently available within state-owned enterprise (SOE) assets,”
Singh notes that Tejas Networks, through its partnership with Tsiko Africa Technologies, believes that dormant, common backhaul transmission assets can be leveraged to reduce the cost of connectivity in peri-urban and rural SA.
“Beyond providing the technology to activate fibre assets, we believe we have experience and understanding to align SOE utilities and broadband entities to drive a national connectivity agenda. We will leverage the experience and expertise of our partner Tejas Networks in building countrywide broadband networks in India and other emerging markets to achieve these objectives,” he adds.
Tejas recently partnered with BTCL, Bangladesh’s government-owned telecommunications company, to construct a high-capacity optical fibre transmission network to distribute high-speed Internet bandwidth from the SMW-5 undersea submarine cable system to key locations within Bangladesh.
He adds Tsiko would like to partner with government and the relevant SOEs that own transmission assets extending to nearby peri-urban and rural areas.
“The ability to consolidate these disparate assets into a common managed network will provide the foundation for a lower cost rural broadband implementation.”
The South African government is also looking to the project to meet the technology goals of the National Development Plan (NDP). As part of the NDP, government has undertaken to connect its offices across the country, starting in the rural areas, to ensure South Africans have access to the most modern communication tools and services.
