The East African Submarine System (Eassy), a 1,4Tbit/s sub-sea cable along Africa’s east coast, is on track to go live in eight months’ time, according to Neotel, one of the investors in the project.
Eassy is an operator-led initiative to build a cable system along a similar but shorter route to the Seacom cable, which recently went live. There are 27 operators invested in Eassy. They include big names like Bharti, France Telecom, MTN, Telkom and Vodacom.
The physical installation of Eassy, which will connect SA with Djibouti and onward via the Europe India Gateway cable, will begin with the laying of the shore-end cable in Maputo. 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, Neotel says.
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 (SA) are either ready or in the final stages of construction.
Eassy’s management committee says it is confident Eassy will be ready for service 30 June 2010. — Staff reporter, TechCentral
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