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Johannesburg - Telecommunications company Neotel said on
Wednesday the construction of the East African Submarine Cable (EASSy), one of four
undersea cables in which the first converged network operator is involved, is still on
track. This follows the recent Management Committee of the EASSy Cable held at
Livingstone in Zambia at which Neotel is represented.
"As a local company providing global access, we are the only telecoms company that
offers connectivity through all international cabling systems - EASsy (East Africa),
WACS (West Africa), Safe/SAT 3 and Seacom," said Angus Hay, executive head of
technology at Neotel.
"This heralds a new age of bandwidth competition, access and affordability for
Africa to aggressively compete on the world stage, as this will increase the available
international bandwidth as well as the level of reliability of international links,"
he said.
The physical installation of the EASSy cable will start with the laying of the
shore end cable in Maputo, Mozambique. The cable, which has been shipped from the
Alcatel-Lucent factory in Calais, France, will be installed in the coming weeks. The
first cable loading on board a ship started in September 2009 in preparation for
laying it in the next few months.
During the meeting in Zambia, the Management Committee noted with satisfaction
that the manufacture of various elements of the EASSy system is at an advanced stage
of manufacturing. The nine cable landing stations namely, Port Sudan, Djibouti,
Mogadishu (Somalia), Mombasa (Kenya), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Moroni (Comoros),
Toliary (Madagascar), Maputo (Mozambique) and Mtunzini (South Africa) are either ready
or in the final stages of construction.
"Our participation in the international cables, such as EASSy, forms a critical
part of our strategy to provide South Africans with access to true broadband and to
ultimately connect them to the rest of the world," Hay concluded.
The Management Committee is confident EASSy will meet the 'Ready for Service' date
on June 30 2010, as originally planned.
EASSy is a consortium of 27 operators building an open access international fibre
optic submarine cable, comprising Botswana Telecommunications Corporation, Bharti, BT,
Comores Telecom, Etisalat (UAE), Neotel (South Africa), France Telecom, Mauritius
Telecom, MTN Group, STC Group, Sudan Telecom, Telecom Malagasy, TTCL (Tanzania),
Telkom South Africa, Vodacom, Zamtel and WIOCC, a joint venture comprising Botswana
Telecommunications Corporation, Dalkom Somalia, Djibouti Telecom, Gilat Satcom
Nigeria, Lesotho CA, Onatel Burundi, Telecomunica's de Mozambique, Telkom Kenya,
UCOM Burundi, Uganda Telecom and Zanzibar Telecom.
- I-Net Bridge