Bandwidth boost from sea cables
SEVERAL undersea cable projects, representing a total investment of about $6bn, are expected to increase SA’s international bandwidth capacity more than a hundredfold by the end of 2011.
One is the Seacom undersea cable to come into operation on June 27 and connect SA and the east coast of Africa to Europe.
Seacom CEO Brian Herlihy says links have been established between the cable landing point in Richards Bay to a data centre in Johannesburg using Neotel’s national backbone network.
He says Seacom has already started selling international capacity to operators and service providers, most of which will connect to the undersea cable through the data centre.
Many more are expected to purchase capacity, including some of the hundreds of service providers that were recently issued with licences that allow them to set up their own infrastructure. These service providers will be able to buy international capacity at wholesale prices for the first time.
The Seacom cable extends up the east coast of Africa, and Seacom has also established data centres in Nairobi, Kampala in Uganda, and Kigali in Rwanda, with links to the cable landing points through local infrastructure providers such as Alcatel.
The Seacom cable has a total capacity of 1,2 terabytes a second (Tbps). It will initially boost global bandwidth by 20 gigabytes per second (Gbps) to 40Gbps in SA and another 20Gbps to 30Gbps in East African markets. The take-up of capacity on the cable is expected to increase exponentially.
“There is a pent up demand for international capacity,” says Herlihy.
Arthur Goldstuck, chief analyst at World Wide Worx says the Seacom Cable is one of half a dozen cables that will come into operation over the next year that affect SA and Africa.
These include the West Africa Cable System (WACS), previously known as Infraco, in which the government, Telkom, Vodacom, Neotel and MTN are investing. It will link SA and west African coastal countries to Europe, offering the highest capacity of all the African undersea cables at 3,8Tbps and is expected to be completed early in 2011. Planned landing points include SA, Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Canary Islands, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, Portugal and the UK.
He says Glo-1 is another west African undersea cable system that will connect Nigeria to the UK, with additional landing points in Portugal, Ghana, Senegal, and possibly other countries. It is expected to go live this year with a capacity of 640Gbps.
Another is MainOne, a 1,92Tbps cable that will connect Portugal to Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Gabon, Senegal, Congo, Ivory Coast, Morocco and SA and is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of next year.
In addition, France Telecom Orange is building the African Coast to Europe (ACE) cable system that will link 20 West African countries to France, with a possible extension to SA.
Then there is the EASSy cable, which will link SA and East Africa with landing points in six countries, and will provide a capacity of 1,4Tbps and is expected to go live in the second half of 2010.
The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS), that will link Mombasa on the Kenya coast to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, but will have little impact on SA.
“TEAMS was commissioned by the Kenyan government because of Telkom wanting control over the EASSy cable,” says Goldstuck.
At present, SA relies on the capacity of the existing undersea cable SAT-3/SAFE/ WASC for international bandwidth. Telkom has the monopoly over SAT-3, which runs from SA to Portugal and Spain, landing in eight countries on the west coast of Africa, with a capacity of 130Gbps.
He says a minor existing undersea cable to West Africa is Atlantis-2, which extends from Portugal to Argentina, Brazil, Senegal, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands. It has been in operation for about 10 years.
“But nobody talks about this cable, because it only has one point of contact in Africa.”
He says once all the undersea cables are in operation, there will be a glut of international bandwidth and there will be a lot of pressure on the telecommunication operators to bring down wholesale prices.
However, other costs will need to be factored into consumer prices, including licensing and the land-based infrastructure to carry data between the landing point, the service provider and the customer. This is happening in SA, with Neotel partnering MTN and Vodacom to build a national fibre infrastructure.
Similar projects are on the go in other parts of Africa.
Undersea cable system discussion
Business Day
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