East coast spaghetti
SA could soon be awash in cheap international bandwidth. That’s if the level of interest — from government and the private sector — in investing in new submarine telecommunications cables is any indication.
Telkom has long enjoyed a monopoly over international communications through the Sat-2 and Sat-3/Safe cable systems. That exclusivity ends in November when other telecom operators, including Neotel and the cellphone providers, will be given access to the Sat 3 landing stations. But capacity on Sat-3 is expected to run out in the next few years, thanks to rapidly growing demand, and the race is on to build new systems.
Competition for such systems is particularly fierce along Africa’s east coast, where countries still have to rely on expensive satellite communications to provide Internet services.
At least five new cable projects are on the cards. They are:
Eassy, the East Africa Submarine System
An operator-led project to build the first cable along Africa’s eastern seaboard, Eassy has run into heavy weather after falling out with some African governments, including SA’s. Under the auspices of Nepad, these governments have attempted to get control of Eassy. It’s now unclear whether the project, which was scheduled for commercial launch by the end of next year, will be ready before a new, rival project, Seacom, comes on stream.
The Nepad Broadband ICT Infrastructure Network
Some African governments now want to build their own, rival cable system along Africa’s east coast. It’s not clear if this project will see the light of day but if it does, it will connect to a planned terrestrial network that will connect countries, including land-locked states, in East and Southern Africa.
Seacom
This cable system, being built by Herakles Telecom, will connect countries in Southern and East Africa with Europe and India. It enjoys the financial backing of private equity group Blackstone and Neotel, which will land Seacom in SA.
Broadband InfraCo
This R5bn, government-led project to build a new, high capacity cable system is necessary, government says, to bring down high bandwidth costs. But critics say the system will undermine investment in similar systems by the private sector. The first leg, which will connect SA with Brazil, is expected to go live in 2009. The European leg will be built later. The plan is to connect the system to the proposed Nepad-backed cable along the KwaZulu Natal coast at Mtunzini.
An expansion of the Fibre-optic Link Around the Globe (Flag), the world’s largest private undersea cable system.
India’s Reliance Communications, which owns Flag Telecom, said in January that it would spend US1,5bn building four new cables — in Asia, the Mediterranean, the Pacific and Africa. Reliance’s Africa cable will run along the continent’s east coast. It is not known when construction will begin. Reliance is a competitor to India’s VSNL, which holds 26% of Neotel.
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