New internet cable '80% cheaper'

Johannesburg - The Seacom undersea telecommunications cable will prove about 80% cheaper than the current international cable for operators wanting to lease bandwidth.

This was indicated by Suveer Ramdhani, a strategy adviser for Seacom, at the Institute for International Research broadband conference in Johannesburg.

He compared leasing costs for the Seacom cable with those for the SAT3, the only current undersea cable to South Africa. Local access to SAT3 has been traditionally controlled by Telkom.

Ramdhani stated that Seacom is prepared to make its services available to any licensed service provider. This would include large players like Telkom, MTN, Vodacom, emerging players like Neotel, as well as smaller niche operators which are now also permitted to build networks.

The project will cost some $600m (about R4.5bn). The cable's capacity will be 1.28 terabits per second and it will follow a 17 000km route.

The Seacom cable is fully funded and African investors hold a majority stake (76.25%) in the project.

Investors include Industrial Promotion Services - a subsidiary of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development - with 26.25%, local investment group VenFin (25%), the American infrastructure development group Herakles Telecom (23.75%), empowerment group Convergence Partners (12.5%) and empowerment group Shanduka (12.5%).

According to Ramdhani, construction is progressing well. The cable will land in South Africa at the KwaZulu-Natal coastal town of Mtunzini.

The aim is to switch the cable on for commercial use by the end of June.

It will link, for example, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia with India and Europe - in time for the broadband requirements of the World Cup soccer tournament in 2010.

- Sake24.com

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