Freight giant Transnet partners with Huawei to increase competitiveness

South African freight rail company, Transnet, is partnering with Huawei as it is repositioning its freight transportation system to increase competitiveness.

Media reports indicate that Transnet has set out to digitalise its ports and railway network operations.

BusinessTech Africa found out that Transnet’s digital strategy is built on the utilisation of cutting-edge ICT to increase the rail, port, and pipeline networks in South Africa’s connectivity, capacity, and bandwidth.

Using real-time data, Transnet also wants to increase its efficiency and capacity. It has teamed up with Huawei to create an “upgradable and easily maintainable transmission backbone network featuring high bandwidth and reliability” in order to do this.

On this partnership with Transnet, Huawei says the freight company’s SDH network has reached the end of its cycle.

“The SDH 2.5G/10G backbone network had reached the end of its lifecycle, unable to support Transnet’s production and operations,” said Huawei per ITWeb.

“On top of that, operating the obsolete SDH network was not efficient, and integration with newer technologies was troublesome, slowing down the company’s digitalisation initiatives and business expansion.

“In response, Huawei deployed the all-optical backbone network solution for railways, building an independent large-capacity wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) transmission network that meets Transnet’s business and production security requirements.”

This website has also gathered that information technology systems “disruption” at Transnet led T-Systems to the termination of its R1.5 billion deal.

According to Huawei, the network supports future services and strengthens Transnet’s digital strategy by enabling the efficient and real-time transmission of a vast volume of commercial data.

“These intelligent, large-capacity MS-OTN products integrate optical and packet functions, providing the transmission capacity of 100G and beyond,” added the technology company, Huawei.

“They feature high reliability, low latency, and deterministic quality, and support end-to-end native hard pipe networks from the access layer to the transport layer.

“The system can now centrally carry Transnet’s different businesses at multiple layers and interfaces, ensuring independent and secure operations.

“To enhance the stability and scalability of the operation network, Transnet adopted Huawei’s dense WDM technology that supports a single wavelength capacity of at least 100Gbit/s.”

Transnet manages more than 30 000km of rails, and its rail infrastructure accounts for 80% of all rail infrastructure in Africa.