SEACOM reveals current bandwidth utilisation
SEACOM opened their Broadband Experience exhibition at Nelson Mandela Square today. The exhibition distributes a 155Mb/s connection to 30 computer stations and exhibits, via a direct STM-1 connection to London. The public is invited to attend the exhibition and experience the potential that true broadband connections can offer.
The connection at the event is running from “London over fibre – we have four routes through Europe to Marseilles, then pretty much directly into South Africa via the [undersea] fibre. Then on Neotel backhaul into Midrand. Neotel supplied the link from the Neotel data centre into Sandton. The Neotel link to Sandton is a combination of fibre and microwave connections,” explained Herlihy.
Of the total 1.28Tb/s potential capacity of the cable, “about 5% to 6%” is currently being utilised said Herlihy. This translates into around 70 Gbps.
Impact
In terms of what SEACOM can bring to Africans, Herlihy mentioned that African SEACOM partners are beginning or planning to rollout very interesting products using the additional bandwidth. Herlihy gave the examples of Cisco Telepresence, which has numerous possibilities, such as linking government ministries, and health facilities.
“The digitalisation of post-production in South Africa, has also been hugely effected,” said Herlihy. Virtual private networks laid on top of SEACOM for example, are being used by production houses in Cape Town to send large post-production files back and forth between Hollywood.
Other exciting initiatives have been proposed by the likes of Paramount, who want to stream HD movies into Africa, and musician Mos Def, who is looking into live streaming of concerts into Africa.
Reduced rates to educational institutions have been one of the development goals for SEACOM, with an agreement with the TENET NPO highlighted as the major deal for South Africa. “This provides 10 Gb/s to TENET networks at about US$7 per megabit,” said Herlihy.
“The next big [thing] is cloud computing. What you actually have to hold in your hand can be a pretty simple device, and applications from the cloud can be as sophisticated as you want. This is most exciting for Africa … as cloud computing is the ultimate in economy of scale,” said Herlihy.
Competition
Commenting on the recently launched City-to-City product from Telkom (an STM-1 IPLC connection), which is in direct competition to SEACOM’s STM-1 offering, Herlihy said that Telkom doesn’t have products which compete with SEACOM STM-4, STM-16 and STM-64 wholesale offerings.
“SEACOM is a wholesale structure, so although our [STM-1] public price might be higher, Neotel and Internet Solutions will purchase at a higher level, which [is] lower [than Telkom] prices, and they will pass those savings on,” said Herlihy.
“Think about the wholesale prices when we started in 2007 – since then prices have come down, and it’s the arrival of SEACOM that has created that competition,” noted Herlihy.
When asked about future plans for SEACOM cable redundancy, Herlihy said “Laying a cable is a huge development project – we’d like to either be part of a project, or lead a project, but redundancy is a must.”
In terms of SEACOM’s ability to repair the cable, the company subscribes to the various zones monitored by cable reparation ships. Repairs can take anywhere up to five days. SEACOM has however experienced no problems with the undersea portion of the cable thus far. The only South African issue occurred within the first week of landing in Mtunzini, and was on the national backhaul side of operations.
Rewards
The most rewarding moments for Herlihy include receiving a call from Kenyan ISP Safaricom, saying they have experienced a 200% increase in data usage.
“So many young African developers have come up to me and said ‘Thank you’ for enabling me to achieve what wasn’t possible without access to bandwidth,” said Herlihy.
The President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, met with Herlihy, and thanked him personally for the arrival of SEACOM in the country. “President Kagame said to me, ‘What we’ve been trying to do as a government, SEACOM has enabled – allowing us to communicate regionally’ – to get a compliment from a person like that, is really cool.”
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