One of the cornerstones of Vodacom’s Ready Business ethos is that its customers should have access to the fastest, most reliable connection available.
Since 2008, Vodacom has invested more than R2 billion in fibre transmission to connect its more than 10 000 cellular base stations. This fibre infrastructure now forms the backbone of Vodacom’s FTTB (fibre-to-the-business) service, which paves the way for true cloud and other next-generation services, while opening the door to a new level of digital transformation.
Avaya
Avaya is a global leader in enterprise communications systems. It provides unified communications, contact centre, data solutions, and related services both direct and through channel partners to leading businesses and organisations around the world. Enterprises of all sizes depend on Avaya for state-of-the-art communications that improve efficiency, collaboration, customer service and competitiveness.
Skills transfer is an important component of Avaya’s offering as this assists users to transform features and functions into a complete communications solution. Avaya Learning develops and delivers training for Avaya products and solutions. The collective insight of over 100 years of leadership and vital knowledge from support centres worldwide is distilled into some of the best training available in the industry, delivered at each individual team’s pace and convenience.
With the most extensive network across South Africa and proven reliability, Vodacom was ideally positioned to offer the kind of world-class broadband solutions that Avaya required. Given the rapid expansion plan, service options and attractive pricing on offer, Avaya recognised a partnership with Vodacom would offer clear business advantage.
Increased upstream and downstream bandwidth
Due to its low loss character, Vodacom’s FTTB service now provides 10M bandwidth, at equal upstream and downstream specification, with little limitation on distances. This makes it ideal for Avaya’s training services where distance learners and lecturers use high-speed data transmission applications.
Steady transmission
A very stable signal (as a result of Vodacom’s fibre optic network) ensures high-quality broadband Internet access suitable for real-time high-definition multimedia services.
Business enablement
Avaya’s blended learning approach offers students a combination of self-directed, remote interactive and classroom learning environments to maximise effectiveness and decrease time required to reach proficiency. Vodacom’s FTTB service enhances Avaya South Africa’s ability to host training sessions for Avaya’s global OPCOs and has improved customer satisfaction scores significantly since its introduction.
Workflow Efficiency
Vodacom’s FTTB service has entirely replaced Avaya’s original ADSL connection. It provides almost double the speed that the business had previously, and because Vodacom was able to drastically reduce the cost of its offering, there has been very little increase in the cost to company.
The service is supported by a flexible range of service plans which can be adapted for the business as its needs change. Vodacom has already enhanced the FTTB service to Avaya to accommodate additional client requirements and implemented a FTTB Service Support model, which ensures optimal FTTB service to Avaya.
This project was among the first major FTTB deployments in the country and provided significant lessons in end-to-end best practice going forward. Open communications and continual feedback Vodacom’s technical and management teams were instrumental in ensuring a successful installation and continue to add excellent value to the client.
