Internet and data traffic to China will no longer have to go via London, and SA companies who conduct business in Asia and the Pacific Rim can now access to reduced latencies of under 200ms, says IS.

Todd Schoeman, international VPN product manager for IS, says: Our operations team has delivered the first MPLS PoP that uses the SAFE cable out of SA for direct connectivity to the Far East. This is a first for a local ICT company offering MPLS VPN services. This PoP delivers a round trip time of well below 200ms between SA and Hong Kong, which is similar in latency to London from SA, and quicker than from SA to New York.

Previously, customers had two options - either an International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC), or being routed via the SAT2 or SAT3 cable systems that run to London, and then onwards via other cable systems headed toward the Far East. IPLCs are costly, while routing via London has high latency due to long cable distances.

As a result of this installation, IS says that it will be possible to achieve:

* IP VPN connectivity directly to Hong Kong and the Pacific Rim via SAFE cable connectivity;

* IPVPN services in five classes of service including data and multimedia classes (as of 1 February 2005, voice services will become legal);

* Security and end to end management of the network, as per the IS MPLS offering;

* A redundant service in that SAFE failures have alternate rerouting via London or New York during times of outage;

* Onward connectivity from Hong Kong to any Asian or Pacific Rim country including Australia and New Zealand - can be achieved via leased circuits and interconnect agreements with predominant service providers in the Far East.
This MPLS Node will be subject to stringent SLA parameters, as is usually the case with IS Network services.

Our customers who currently have connectivity to the East are going to notice an immediate difference in speed when we cut them over to the new node, says Schoeman. Bandwidth costs will be lower and IS ensures that our backbone capacity is always ahead of the customer uptake. It is IS first footprint in the Far East, and, if business continues to expand as rapidly as at present, we will expand and add to the eastern infrastructure. With our existing agreements with strategic partners in Europe and the US, we are well positioned to cover almost the entire globe, and deliver a world-class service to our customers.