Fibre Fibre I want me some Fibre!

There's a lot of exciting activity in the FTTH space - What's been keeping you guys busy at Accelerit?

Our primary focus in 2018 was to scale our network adequately to cater for the explosive growth we experienced. The growth caught us some what off-guard as we were relatively new in the fibre space with very limited marketing. Through word of mouth however we quickly realized that people had been waiting for a product crafted around their needs and our Prepaid Fibre product delivered exactly that.

What were major challenges experienced by Accelerit?

Among some of the challenges we experienced were availability of IPv4 public IP addresses as we do not do any natting on our FTTH network. Any one who has dealt with AfriNIC (The custodian on IP address in Africa) of late will know that it’s a bit of a lengthy process to get IPv4 blocks lately but eventually in December we were assigned additional ranges.

There are still issues that we come across from time to time due to the fibre network operators (FNOs) being down. Reasons ranging from power cuts, fibre cable damages, road accidents affecting aerial fibre deployments and others however these obviously affect all the ISPs when experienced. We try and push for quick restoration of services for our affected clients when these happen.

What have been the latest improvements made on your network?

We have now deployed multi-core network kit and servers at all the Teraco data centres (Johannesburg, KwaZulu Natal and Cape Town) specifically to cater for the service demand in the regions also and to ensure that not a single region is reliant on our national long-distance routes to the Johannesburg Teraco datacentre for uptime.  

Deploying servers and network kit per region reduced our NAP pings from 20ms to 1ms in Durban and Cape Town making it easier and faster for our users to consume Google, Netflix and Showmax etc content.  We also more than doubled our capacity on international transit ensuring that we run at a maximum of 60% at peak.

Over all we’ve received positive feedback from our users on their experience however we work everyday to ensure we remain providing excellent service always and where there are slip ups we course-correct rapidly. 

What can users look forward to going forward from Accelerit?

There’s a myriad of value-added services we will be launching this year all of them centered around customer needs. Accelerit already offers VoIP, Website hosting and on-demand Virtual Private Servers services on its platform. Our users access these services easily via their client portal and can activate them within a matter of minutes any time of day.  We will therefore continue with the automation of our services while introducing other services  

What would be the advice you wish to give to FTTH users?

Make sure you keep those routers away from other microwave emitting device to eliminate signal interference.

When testing for line speed make sure you have full signal on your device if it isn’t possible to test with a LAN cable. 

Always check if your line speed is enough for your needs as we find that with the advancements in technology devices are consuming more and more data. Line speeds of 4mbps and slower just do not cut it any more especially for activities such as online gaming and streaming. Your experience won’t be great.

Make sure there is enough coverage in your apartment / house especially if you live in a multi-story or big space. Wi-Fi has inherent challenges as a technology, and these aren’t ISP specific. Also, if you can get a better router than the one with provide you with then go for it – Remember our network does not restrict you to using our router only.