{"id":547959,"date":"2006-02-09T14:33:56","date_gmt":"2006-02-09T14:33:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/547959-progress-made-on-cable-project.html"},"modified":"2006-02-09T14:33:56","modified_gmt":"2006-02-09T14:33:56","slug":"progress-made-on-cable-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/547959-progress-made-on-cable-project.html","title":{"rendered":"Progress made on cable project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;The meetings resulted in a draft Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&amp;MA) being drawn up. Three international telecommunications firms have joined the project. The investment criteria is being defined,&quot; said Mokone-Matabane.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">John Sihra, EASSy Project Coordinator, said the Construction and Maintenance Agreement working group came up with the first draft of the document which he said would act as the &#8216;bible&#8217; for the project moving forward.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;The Construction and Maintenance Agreement will now be revised in two more drafts which will be done electronically between the parties. We hope to have the final C&amp;MA draft ready in March or April. The Construction and Maintenance Agreement will govern how the partners in the project interact amongst themselves, procurement, upgrades, maintenance and operations, the responsibilities of the off shore cable landing parties and so on.&quot;<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;The financial and commercial working group examined the existing funding for the project and the funding that will be needed to complete the project. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">The total cost of the cable system is expected to be about US$200 million,&quot; the statement said.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">The financial and commercial working group meeting welcomed the inclusion of British Telecom (UK), Teleglobe (Canada) and Saudi Telecom (Saudi Arabia) as parties in the project. <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;We also have interest being shown from China Telecom and Malaysia Telecom, amongst other,&quot; Sihra stated.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;The Interim Procurement Working Group will sit in February to deliberate on the tenders which have been received for the construction of the cable project and are expected to make a decision in April \/ May this year by which time the final draft of the Construction and Maintenance Agreement will also be ready. Once financial agreements are signed off in June, construction can begin on the cable in July or August, with the cable project expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2007.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">&quot;The cable will result in broadband access being opened up to the continent in a real way. We&#8217;re also looking at in-country, cross-border, back-haul connectivity links to give land-locked countries access to the cable as well,&quot; concluded Sihra.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">The cable, a 9,900km high-performance fibre optic cable running from Mtunzini in South Africa to Port-Sudan, will land in nine African countries along the continent&#8217;s Eastern coast. Land locked countries like Ethiopia, Botswana, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe will also be able to access the EASSy cable.<\/font> <\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\">Inet-Bridge ||\u00a0 <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=37291\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><font size=\"2\">Discuss this article<\/font><\/a><font size=\"2\"> <\/font><\/p>\n<p><font size=\"2\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p \/>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) Work Groups have made significant strides in their task of making the 9,900km high-performance fibre optic cable a reality, Sentech CEO Dr Sebiletso Mokone-Matabane said in a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-547959","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547959"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}