SEACOM on track

Ivy's probably sitting at her desk reading this story and thinking 'how can I derail SEACOM before I leave office?'
 
The entire SEACOM network will connect all cable sections together off the horn of Africa in the second quarter of 2009.
Click to expand...

Nice to see an update on SEACOM's progress. I just hope that the pirates around the Somalia coastline (they're making the news headlines on a daily basis now) don't delay the laying of the cables!
 
I am down here in Maputo with the Seacom guys at the moment. We've just got back from the construction site that will be the landing station. Look for a photo essay on FM Tech in the next 24 hours or so...
Duncan
 
mcleodd said:
I am down here in Maputo with the Seacom guys at the moment. We've just got back from the construction site that will be the landing station. Look for a photo essay on FM Tech in the next 24 hours or so...
Duncan
Click to expand...

:cool: Thanks
 
Can't wait for this to go live from my side. I can also say that while the SEACOM cable is being laid, at the same time all the prep work required by the various customers of SEACOM is going ahead from what I'm hearing.

I know from our side we're ready to roll (I was over in London week before last installing our 10gig interfaces and sorting out all the IP transit providers required when the cable goes live, as well as organizing some dark fiber in London to inter-connect data centers in preparation for SEACOM)

Going to be an interesting one to watch unfold, as getting the cable laid from end to end is just the start, the complexities of landing huge bandwidth onto South African networks then come into play, particularly getting the backhaul from the beach and/or landing point in Johannesburg all the way to the client, and making sure that the network you're landing the bandwidth on is actually capable of passing the much larger amounts of bandwidth. As we discovered as we emarked on this project, its a very complex thing to move a network to a point where it can carry 50 times more traffic than it was the day before you turned on a new cable!

About time though! Let the packets flow!
 
i'll wait to see how much the portion form landing to your house costs :(
 
SlowJoe said:
Can't wait for this to go live from my side. I can also say that while the SEACOM cable is being laid, at the same time all the prep work required by the various customers of SEACOM is going ahead from what I'm hearing.

I know from our side we're ready to roll (I was over in London week before last installing our 10gig interfaces and sorting out all the IP transit providers required when the cable goes live, as well as organizing some dark fiber in London to inter-connect data centers in preparation for SEACOM)

Going to be an interesting one to watch unfold, as getting the cable laid from end to end is just the start, the complexities of landing huge bandwidth onto South African networks then come into play, particularly getting the backhaul from the beach and/or landing point in Johannesburg all the way to the client, and making sure that the network you're landing the bandwidth on is actually capable of passing the much larger amounts of bandwidth. As we discovered as we emarked on this project, its a very complex thing to move a network to a point where it can carry 50 times more traffic than it was the day before you turned on a new cable!

About time though! Let the packets flow!
Click to expand...

Good news but the above part scares me abit. Telkom is still gonna charge us an arm and a leg for their infrastructure.
 
Garyvdh said:
I just hope they do everything thorough and correct the first time around while they are working so fast. Would be a typical day in Africa to find out that someone somewhere didn't connect something, or plugged something in the wrong way.
Click to expand...

its a winner
be happy already
 
AMANDLA!! AMANDLA!!

COMRADES AMANDLA!!

QUIETEN DOWN COMRADES

AMANDLA!!

;)
 
Last edited:
dominic said:
Neotel is landing the Seacom cable.
Click to expand...
Will be interesting to see how Seacom's capacity filters into the market (via Neotel & others) and what effect it will have on short term pricing.

As far as I understand you can't buy bandwidth directly from Seacom, only partial ownership of the cable for its lifespan. This requires a heafty upfront investment in $, and the groundbreaking pricing is based on 20 year recoup on investment.

Wonder how many are prepared to commit to business plans that extend that long?
 
afaik the partial ownership (IRUs) were fully subscribed a year ago

pricing pressure on SAT3 would be one potential short term benefit i would hope to see (and based on what i have seen of Seacom's pricing there should be a lot of pressure)
 
dominic said:
afaik the partial ownership (IRUs) were fully subscribed a year ago
Click to expand...
You sure about that Dom?

Were talking big bucks here, $11mil - $28mil per Gbps depending on volume and it will be a > 1300 Gbps cable.

Even if the SA IT sector (excl Telkom) commited to 20% of the cable (260Gbps) that would average out at a $5bil (R50bil) total investment, excl. the ~ 3% annual maint fee. And thats payable by Jun 2012.

Don't see where the money would come from?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X