Yet another undersea cable has been commissioned for the coast of Africa. When it’s built next year, it will bring total capacity encircling the continent to more than 20,2Tbit/s.
In the year 2000 Africa’s total international capacity was just 200Gbit/s, or 0,2Tbit/s.
Other cables recently commissioned or already in operation include Seacom and the East Africa Submarine System along the continent’s east coast, and the Africa Coast to Europe (Ace), West African Cable System (Wacs) and MainOne in the west.
The new cable will link Victoria in the Seychelles and Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania with around 1 900km of undersea fibre. It’s being dubbed Seas, for the Seychelles East Africa System.
It’s the first high-capacity undersea cable system to connect the Seychelles with mainland Africa and the island nation’s government hopes it will relieve its dependence on expensive satellite connectivity.
The Seychelles government, Cable & Wireless Seychelles and Airtel Seychelles will foot the US$30m bill for the construction of Seas.
Alcatel-Lucent has been contracted to design and build the cable, which is expected to provide 320Gbit/s of capacity.
Steve Song, telecommunications fellow at the Shuttleworth Foundation and the creator of a well-known undersea cable map, says the new cable probably follows in the wake of Bharti’s acquisition of Telecom Seychelles in August.
“Bharti regards the Seychelles as yet another uncompetitive telecoms market that they can apply their so far highly successful business model to,” he says.
According to Song, providing fibre access for their new acquisition is generally a part of that strategy.
Bharti has also promised to invest more than $10m in the Seychelles business, which could result in it building a national fibre network. “It’s a big investment for a small island,” says Song. — Staff reporter, TechCentral
- Subscribe to our free daily newsletter
- Follow us on Twitter or on Facebook
