Above: TSTT technicians lay fiber for the One Network project. Photo courtesy TSTT.

“Speed. Innovation. Reliability” These are the watchwords for the network that TSTT is investing millions in to delight its customers. The new mega-network with intelligent aggregation and self-healing capabilities will replace dozens of specialised smaller systems and present a truly converged network that will be among the most advanced networks of its kind globally. 

The project, dubbed ‘One Network’, anchors TSTT’s digital transformation and when completed, will allow the Company to seamlessly support all current voice, internet, mobile, security and enterprise services as well as more advanced features like software defined networking, software as a service, network function virtualisation, the Internet Of Things (IOT) and services automation.

It is being called the ‘One Network’ project because it is supplanting over 30 different systems, some of which are end of life. The IP centric and optical foundation requirement for the new network will make it impervious to technological shifts for the foreseeable future. Its robustness will be derived from having a fiber optic transport system and the baseline processing capacity of a 100 gigabit core that can be scaled as the need arises.

TSTT’s Chief Technology and Information Officer, Roger Richards, explained, “Businesses and homeowners have very diverse data usage habits so we are designing a network that can simultaneously handle the diverse and exponentially growing volume of data and intelligently manage this traffic for services delivery, efficiency and innovation. Business data can therefore move over the network in complete harmony with bandwidth-hungry residential services like video.”

While the new network’s scalable 100 gigabit core far outclasses its predecessor’s, One Network’s true delight lies in its architectural design. “Our team has designed a self-healing, zero outage network. Not only will it be able to facilitate in-service upgrades without disrupting operations but it is intelligent enough to both bypass issues and continue providing service or quickly react to and recover faults while notifying the system administrators” stated Richards. 

TSTT engineers review the design for a fiber roll-out plan. Photo courtesy TSTT.

With security, reliability and efficiency as top priorities, One Network’s resilience, intelligent data aggregation and speed are poised to bring a quantum improvement to service quality and customer experience. 

Along with the ‘Zero Copper’ project, One Network is one of the key pillars that is driving TSTT’s overarching Digital Transformation strategy. Research conducted by Forrester Consulting revealed that customer experience is at the core of Digital Transformation.

Richards said, “As TSTT moves in a direction of Digital Transformation, we are deploying technologies that transform the way we deliver services and capabilities to our customers. This drives a lot of the automation, and by extension, simplification of processes, that allow us to do things better, faster and more effectively”.

Companies worldwide are making more significant investments in Digital Transformation. In a 2016 Gartner study, 2600 Chief Information Officers interviewed disclosed that approximately 18% of their budgets were allocated to Digital transformation. In 2018, this figure is expected to increase to 28%.

Whether it is data, broadband, home security solutions, entertainment or any service offered currently or in the future on the bmobile network, customers are expected to have an incomparable experience. “bmobile is currently leading the wireless market with our 4G LTE offerings and on the new network, we will see customers having one of the best experiences on the globe particularly with respect to data and entertainment.

We are talking about more High Definition channels, 100 megabit speed, low latency gaming and near instant movie downloads” said Richards adding that the near 100% uptime combined with bmobile’s data centre and cloud service offerings also positions bmobile as the solution provider of choice in the business community.