Johannesburg - Light is all its going to take to connect South Africans, and the rest of Africa, to Europe and Asia via the
Middle East.
International structured cabling contractor Seacom is building and will own and operate a high capacity undersea cable that that will stretch over approximately 17 000 kilometres, providing cheap bandwidth at high volumes.
The undersea portion will be more than 13 500 kilometres long.
The construction of the privately funded undersea submarine fibre optic cable, which is slightly bigger in diameter than a five rand coin when it's in shallow water, already began in November last year.
The cable, which has 76.25% African ownership, is expected to connect southern and east Africa with Europe and India by linking Mtunzini in the north of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa to Mumbai in India and Marseille in France via Mozambique, Madagascar, Kenya, and Tanzania.
A total 50% of that African ownership comes from South Africa, where Venfin owns 25%, Convergence Partners own 12.5% and Shanduka 12.5%.
According to Seacom, its offerings will complement communication carriers of South and East Africa through the sale of wholesale international capacity to global networks eastward through India and westward through Europe.
Flooding the market
It said that the cable would provide African retail carriers with equal and open access to inexpensive bandwidth, removing the international infrastructure bottleneck and supporting East and South African economic growth.
It also said that the fibre optic undersea cable is cheaper than other fibre or satellite options.
Brian Herlihy, the president of Seacom, explained that by flooding bandwidth into the market would drop prices and be a catalyst for education and research.
He added that Seacom told South African universities that they would only pay 2.5% of what they currently were paying.
"This will support the social and economic development of the African continent, as well as encourage research and development in the ICT sector," he said.
He said last year that the "Sea Cable System is making massive new bandwidth available, enabling prices to come down dramatically and opening up the possibility of developing new fields of economic activity in all the countries served".
'Bandwidth as cheap as R267/month'
"Seacom will pump bandwidth as cheap as R267/month," he explained, speaking at a conference in Johannesburg North on Monday.
Seacom has also procured relationships so that the bandwidth is not limited to only a few locations. It explained that it could use BT in London to link the bandwidth from South Africa to the US, creating a global network through peer-to-peer procuring.
It has also taken into account the creation of a back up structure in the event that something had to go wrong.
Herlihy explained that an incident in Dubai recently left undersea cables in Dubai damaged, which had to be repaired to restore normal internet access.
Media reports said that undersea cables were damaged earlier this year, which led to disruptions. One report said that a ship's anchor had severed one cable between the Emirates and Oman, but there was mystery over what caused the other cuts.
"We have the structure to jump from one cable to another," he said, adding that this de-risks the concept of submarine cables.
According to Herlihy, the SEA Cable System will be ready to serve Southern and East African markets from 2009, well in time to meet the bandwidth needs of the Confederations Cup and the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa, and the growing requirements of the economies in the countries it serves.
In November Seacom had already invested more than $10m in the marine survey of the cable, which would allow it to maintain its ready-for-service date of June 2009.
- I-Net Bridge