The State Information Technology Agency (SITA) today announced that together with its partners, Neotel and Business Connexion, it has successfully deployed a Next Generation Network (NGN) for the South African government. The NGN, a state-of-the-art network, replaces the Government Common Core Network (GCCN), which was first deployed in 2003.

SITA previously announced that since the GCCN's implementation, capacity requirements on the network had grown by 150 per cent year-on-year, but there had been no major bandwidth upgrades to support the increase. The NGN project was undertaken to address this constraint and with its deployment, SITA can now utilise the network's additional capacity to create more virtual private networks, cater for additional ports to connect clients and provide broadband solutions.

The NGN project, which commenced in May 2007, was implemented by October last year, as per the project timelines. The migration of government departments was concluded during January 2008. In addition, the migration was virtually seamless, which ensured that government departments continued to function without disruption or loss of services during the transition.

Minister for Public Service and Administration, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, has praised the parties for delivering the new network within very short timeframes and within budget.

"Successes, such as the NGN project, demonstrate the importance of forging the right partnerships between the public and private sector, which are important to ensure all parties play a role in the transformation of government service delivery," says Fraser-Moleketi.

The NGN project's total investment is worth R454 million over a five year period and it represents the largest deployment of NGN services in sub-Saharan Africa in the public sector.

Neotel, South Africa's first converged communications network operator was awarded a five year contract to provide national backbone transmission services to support the new NGN. Neotel's high capacity links connect SITA's key sites in major cities and towns across South Africa with nearly 700 megabit per second of transmission bandwidth. This is nearly twice the bandwidth SITA has procured in the past.

The investment also entailed an upgrade of the GCCN backbone from Nortel to Cisco technology. Business Connexion supplied, installed and will support the network equipment on the NGN for three years. The upgrade is worth in excess of R76 million, excluding maintenance.

SITA's CEO, Llewellyn Jones, says the organisation has been actively pursuing a strategy to provide NGN services to render more cost-effective and improved offerings to government departments.

"With the NGN in place we can now provide government departments with better response times and a higher quality network that has the ability to run voice, video and data services. Furthermore, the NGN enables SITA to deliver customer services quicker and the ability to plan capacity and profile traffic which allows us to allocate bandwidth more efficiently. The structure of the NGN also translates into lower operational and equipment costs," says Jones.

Jones adds that the new network will allow SITA to expand its client base by providing communications services to municipalities.

"SITA can now also provide additional, as well as customised services to its clients, for example, voice, thereby reducing voice costs. Furthermore, based on the unique requirements of government departments, tailored solutions will be developed, which could include video and multimedia."

Neotel implemented a full Internet Protocol (IP) backbone to all SITA's switching centres within seven months. The company also provided a full alternative transmission routing solution and installed a proactive monitoring system for SITA.

Neotel's MD, Ajay Pandey, says that all of the company's efforts are directed towards fulfilling their promise to South Africans, which is to reduce the cost of doing business and to bridge the digital divide.

"It took Neotel seven months to successfully deploy the state-of-the-art network, tailored for the specific needs of government. We are particularly pleased that, through our partnership with SITA, we have made it possible for government to improve its service to the citizens," says Pandey.

Subsequent phases of the NGN will entail the installation of dual routers into 10 of SITA's switching centres, which will commence in May 2008. Intrusion Prevention Devices will also be installed at customer sites, which is expected to commence around July 2008.