SEACOM bandwidth will soon filter through
SEACOM officially launched commercial services on 23 July 2009, but to date consumers have yet to see the full benefit of the new international cable system. One of the reasons for this is the time it takes to test the new system and integrate it into a company’s existing infrastructure.
A few companies have purchased capacity directly from SEACOM, including Neotel/TATA, Internet Solutions, TENET (non-commercial) and IBS, the holding company of BCS and associate of Super5/Telkom Media.
Internet Solutions has indicated that they are currently in the testing phase of their SEACOM integration and will launch a SEACOM product and related pricing once the testing has been completed. The company did not give any indication as to when it expects to launch commercial SEACOM products.
Neotel seems to be a bit further down the way and is currently busy integrating SEACOM capacity into it’s core international network for it’s international transmission and IP services. When this happens prices should start to come down.
“SEACOM capacity will allow Neotel to create multiple service features and redundancies for Transmission and IP services, by way of this businesses and consumers will see a lower cost of operations for international connectivity,” says Rajeev Sinha, head of products and solutions at Neotel.
SEACOM and TENET
TENET CEO Dr. Duncan Martin explains that back in October 2007, SEACOM offered TENET an amazing price for long-term right-of-use capacity purchase. “With very strong support from most universities and research institutions, we purchased an STM-64 protected SEACOM circuit that runs between the Mtunzini Landing Station 130kms north of Durban and the Telecity Exchange in London,” said Martin.
“The IP capacity in both directions is a shade under 10 Gbps. The purchase is being financed by the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and the repayment of the bank loan is itself being financed over six years by 21 universities and 6 research institutions,” said Martin.
TENET has recently concluded its SEACOM testing and is currently busy with the integration of SEACOM into its current network. TENET CTO Andrew Alston said that this integration requires significant changes to their current network, something which is causing the delay in delivering SEACOM bandwidth to academic institutions.
“We intend to deliver SEACOM bandwidth to the campuses via Neotel’s MPLS network. All sites will be cut over from the SAT-3 service by the end of September. We hope to deliver around 800 Mb/s in that way. Gigabit delivery will have to wait for the SANReN national backbone network and associated SANReN access circuits,” Martin said.
Good news for students and lecturers is that all TENET institutions will receive SEACOM bandwidth via the Sharkhead Gateway at a cost-recovering unit charge that is around 5% of the present one. “Right now we buy 250 Mbps of SAT-3 capacity – 40 fold less than our SEACOM capacity. A year ago it was around 220 Mbps of SAT-3 capacity,” said Martin.
In simple terms it means far more bandwidth and higher speeds to educational institutions when SEACOM is integrated into the TENET network.
Smaller players joining in
Further good news to consumers is that smaller Internet Service Providers are starting to get access to SEACOM bandwidth, a development which is likely to have an impact on ADSL pricing from ISPs making use of Telkom’s IP Connect product.
While many consumers are growing impatient waiting for lower broadband prices and higher usage limits due to lower international bandwidth costs through SEACOM, the effects of the new undersea cable are unlikely to start filtering through before the end of the year.
SEACOM bandwidth testing – comments and views
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