Century City Connect, the open access Fibre-to-the Premises network believed to be a first of its kind on the African continent and now available within the Century City precinct, has signed up  the first four Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to its carrier neutral network.

Century City Connect is providing the country’s fastest “last mile” open access network enabling selected Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer  those living and working in the precinct a variety of customized packages including the fastest voice, broadband and multi-media services.

Director Greg Deans said agreements had so far been signed with Internet Solutions, MTN Business, Frogfoot Technologies and Atec Technologies with further signatories imminent.

“Those living and working in Century City are now able to choose an ISP and customised package that best suits their needs and pockets and will not have to be locked into a long term contract with an ISP if they are unhappy with the service they receive .”

Deans said Century City Connect has laid a circular fibre optic backbone around Century City and commissioned its Optical Exchange Node where the selected ISPs host their services. In addition it has completed three distribution builds taking fibre from the backbone into different precincts and these builds have provided network coverage to about 200 businesses as well as Little Moorings, the first residential development at Century City to go live on the network.  So far 12 buildings within Century City including the 9000 square metre Colosseum mixed use development, Crystal Towers, Estuaries 1 and 2, Waterford House and the offices of the Century City Property Owners’ Association have been connected.

Deans said negotiations with a number of other ISPs were well advanced and they expected more than half of the estimated 400 businesses and most residential complexes located within the precinct to be linked to the network within the next couple of years.

Hein de Swardt, operations manager for Century City Connect, said that as a result of fibre being little known in South Africa, the average consumer has no idea of the differences between ADSL and fibre optic internet access.   “Choosing between ADSL and fibre all depends on your needs. If you only need to use the internet casually where reliability of service is not as important as cost considerations then ADSL might be your best option. However, if you want a tried and true solution with a super-fast connection, fibre would be the way to go.  It is not the intention for the network to compete against highly over-sold and contended services offered over mediums such as ADSL or 3G. The intention of the network is to provide high capacity and dedicated bandwidth to businesses and bulk connectivity to residential schemes in Century City.”