Duncan Martin is the CEO and a director of TENET, a non-profit company whose members are the universities and research councils of South Africa. Some 40 universities, research councils and associated support institutions, contract with TENET for the provision of Internet access to some 90 campuses throughout South Africa.
As a recognised national Research and Education Network (“REN”), TENET is a member of and interconnects with UbuntuNet (the regional REN for eastern and southern Africa) and, through UbuntuNet, exchanges traffic with Géant, Internet2 and other research and education networks around the World.
Three developments have dramatically increased the network capacity available to TENET. First, an STM-64 circuit to London on the SEACOM submarine cable was taken into service on 1 October 2009.
Second, the 10 Gbps SANReN national backbone, that Telkom provided to the CSIR, was commissioned on 1 December 2009. The Meraka Institute of the CSIR is managing the deployment of SANReN (South Africa National Research Network) under contract to the Department of Science and Technology. The CSIR has contracted TENET to operate SANReN.
Third, following the celebrated court actions brought by Altech Autopage Cellular in 2008, and the resulting issuing of ECS and ECNS licenses to former VANS licensees, TENET has worked with Dark Fibre Africa to deploy and operate dark fibre pairs on certain routes.
Duncan is also a director of e-Schools Network of the UbuntuNet Alliance for Research and Education Networking, and of the .ZA Domain Name Authority.
