For many years the only viable way to connect your branches to head office was to use expensive ,wired, point-to-point connections such as Telkom's diginet leased lines. Then ADSL (Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line)  finally arrived in South Africa and companies decided to cut costs and use Virtual Private Network's over broadband ADSL connections to connect branches to head office. For many companies this solution is still a viable alternative to diginet leased lines but for many using VPN's over ADSL has started to reach the limits of its usefulness.

Bonded ADSL and WiMax Provide Alternatives to Leased Lines

One of the reasons for this is the lack of reliability when it comes to any wired service. The continual, and growing, theft of Telkom cable has meant that the reliability, or lack thereof, of ADSL broadband connections has reached a critical point for businesses.

In addition the growing bandwidth requirements of business systems, processes and applications mean, that the upper limit of 4Mbps has become a bottleneck for links; particularly when mutliple branches try and squeeze data down head offices single ADSL connection with it maximum ADSL upload speed of 512Kbps.

Bonded ADSL is the Cheapest Option

Luckily, companies now have a choice when reaching the limit of a single ADSL connection. For companies that don't want to spend quite so much money on a Telkom diginet leased line they can consider making uses of bonded ADSL. Bonded ADSL combines multiple ADSL lines into a single pipe making it an ideal solution for head office, with branches retaining their single ADSL connections. Bonded ADSL will allow head office to service download request from branches up to 2Mbps at a significantly cheaper rate than diginet leased lines. This option also obviates the need for the branches to change the way they connect to the internet thus, significantly, reducing costs.

WiMax Offers Service Guarantees

For those companies that require guaranteed uptimes and SLA's WiMax  is an alternative to diginet leased lines/ Since WiMax is wireless technology it alleviates the risk of down time due to theft of telkom cable. WiMax can replace traditional leased lines at a slightly reduced rate with better guarantees and throughput at the same rate. As with a leased line all branches will also be required to obtain a WiMax connection to connect via point-to-point to head office.