Coventry firm Marconi has won a contract to improve the performance of the national network of one of South Africa's biggest telecoms operators, Transtel.

Under an agreement reached today, Marconi will provide the South African company with technology to better manage its national telecoms network.

It is yet another international success for the firm, which is expanding its Coventry base and creating 2,500 new jobs over the next three years. 

The network will be managed from bases in four main cities - Johannesburg, Kimberley, Durban and Cape Town.  Marconi is to install a management system, called ServiceOn Access (formerly known as NSU), to oversee the task. 

An expert, backed up with a team of technicians will operate ServiceOn Access.

When it detects a fault, ServiceOn Access will signal an alarm and automatically re-route the voice, data or other traffic to avoid the broken section.

This will be done so quickly that customers will be unaware of any faults and traffic will not be disrupted.

George Debbo, Technical Director of Marconi Communications South Africa, said:

"The reliability of the network is considerably improved, with the integrity of the voice, data, video and other network services maintained at very high levels.

"This has measurable positive impacts on the efficiency of Transtel and the services it provides to its major customer, Transnet, and other clients in the region."

"The fault alarms are routed directly to the person in charge of that specific section of the network and from there they are immediately forwarded by SMS, e-mail or telefax to the nearest technician, along with complete instructions for rectification of the fault.

“The result is that faults are repaired properly and exceptionally quickly, even in remote, outlying areas.”