ADSL Bonding: 40 Mbps or more on the cards

Telkom recently revealed that they are trialing their new 8 Mbps ADSL service in Pretoria and Cape Town, and that they are also incorporating 10 Mbps and 12 Mbps speeds in the testing. The first set of ADSL speed upgrades are expected to happen in April/May, depending on the testing results and the exchange and DSLAM upgrades.

The higher ADSL speeds will have a direct impact on ADSL service providers which use their own bandwidth –resulting in increased network costs and potentially higher prices on some of the current 4 Mbps ADSL services.

Web Africa CEO Matthew Tagg says that they plan to offer 8 Mbps services as soon as it becomes available, but warned that the cost for uncapped 8 Mbps or 12 Mbps ADSL services will be exorbitant. Cybersmart MD Laurie Fialkov also highlights the fact that higher speeds equate to higher bandwidth costs. “We have always priced the higher speed accounts at a higher rate as it is much more difficult for us to support,” said Fialkov.

Bonded ADSL

The use of multiple bonded ADSL lines to provide increased downlink and uplink speeds in business environments has become very popular amoung corporate clients, offering downlink speeds of up to 20 Mbps and maximum uplink speeds of 2.5 Mbps.

Two companies currently dominate the local bonded ADSL market: Altech Technology Concepts and Vox Fishbone.

Good news for existing Altech Technology Concepts’ Channel Bonding clients is that they will automatically see the benefits of these increased speeds without any cost increase. “If the customer has 5 x 8 Mbps lines, he would in theory have a 40Mbps download link into our Data Centre,” explains Wayne De Nobrega, ATC CEO.

“The bottleneck may be the backhaul capacity from the specific exchange into the core of the ADSL network which will vary from exchange to exchange,” says De Nobrega. This is something which Vox DataPro MD Gary Sweidan confirms, saying that they often experience slower speeds than 4 Mbps on clients’ 4096 DSL lines.

Sweidan however says that they are very happy and excited about the planned ADSL speed upgrades, and that all their Fishbone clients will automatically receive the higher speeds at no extra costs. The Vox DataPro MD adds that the planned Telkom DSL speed upgrade will be particularly useful when it comes to uplink speeds, especially in the corporate environment.

Vox Fishbone allows for a high number of bonded connections, and Sweidan said that while four 4 Mbps ADSL lines are currently the most popular configuration amoung their clients, they have one client with a sixteen 4 Mbps ADSL line Fishbone solution. Their theoretical downlink is currently 64 Mbps, and this is set to increase to 128 Mbps if Telkom upgrades all their lines to 8 Mbps.