Been reading through this thread, and seeing many people asking about EASSY, SAT3 and other systems, so I figured I'd throw some comments into the mix.
Firstly, those who comment about cost are correct, redundancy costs money, a lot of it. For true redundancy, you need twice your normal running capacity, spread across two systems. This means that you have 50% of your bandwidth sitting idle at any one time. If you don't have that, you don't have proper redundancy, you have a service that will seriously degrade on the failure of one of the circuits. This doesn't come free, someone has to pay for it.
Secondly, if we compare the costs of IRU's (Indefeasible rights of use) on SEACOM vs the costs on EASSY or SAT-3, SEACOM has so far been cheaper. To take more capacity on either of the others, and to have it sit idle in the case of a break, is a cost that has to be passed to the consumers. Unfortunately its very often a case of consumers prefer a cheap service than a reliable service. People move ISP's because of cost, and very few of them ask "What's your backup situation" when they make their choices, they go "How much does this cost me". So the guys who have invested in the redundancy end up with the customers walking away, sad, but true. Strangely its those same customers that cry foul when things break on the cheapest service they could buy.
Thirdly, many ISP's I believe are waiting for WACS, and initial indications are that the costs involved in WACS are substantially lower than other current cables, and its West Coast based (the only other West Coast cable available right now is SAT-3, and the prices are insane. If you buy on EASSY you are STILL left with an East Coast problem that could affect all cables on the East, if you hold out for WACS, you solve this problem). Also keep in mind, these circuits aren't bought on a month by month basis, they are either long term contracts (think a year, 3 years, 5 years, or in many cases life of cable IRUs), so why invest in another east coast cable and lock yourself in when you know WACS is coming, its just about patience.
Forth, the EASSY system does not go all the way to Europe, it joins other cables further up the coast, and again, there are back to back agreements to carry them northwards. It's easy to boast 100% uptime on YOUR cable system when you're not dealing with the troubles involved the moment you have to go through "problem" areas. (Think Suez canal, think Egypt, think the med, all of which are prone to problems of anchors, breaks and other issues.) SMW3 and 4 are known for issues going through these areas.
Look, I don't like the fact that SEACOM has been down as much as it is, and I'm *FAR* from happy with the situation in Egypt at the moment (Where the hell is the terrestrial redundancy on SMW, its land based problems, its not like you have to lay another undersea cable), but at the same time I have to point out, while we whine and cry about such outages, look at your uncapped accounts today, look at what you pay your ISP's, and ask yourself, what made this possible? It was largely SEACOM, lets not forget that.
If you want fully redundant bandwidth that is on both SAT-3 and SEACOM, and hell, add EASSY into the mix, you can have it, just don't expect it at the prices you are paying for something without it, because SOMEONE has to pay for that redundancy, and when you're looking at falling margins on DSL products due to the current market price wars, the insane costs of IPC bandwidth (thanks Telkom), and the rising costs of simple things like power to drive equipment (you'd be shocked at how much this can influence costs), the ISP's can afford to do it without charging you, the customer, a lot more money.
Let's get real for a second here...
