{"id":550712,"date":"2006-11-02T07:12:09","date_gmt":"2006-11-02T07:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress\/technology\/550712-minister-s-sat3-comments-confuse.html"},"modified":"2006-11-02T07:12:09","modified_gmt":"2006-11-02T07:12:09","slug":"minister-s-sat3-comments-confuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/technology\/550712-minister-s-sat3-comments-confuse.html","title":{"rendered":"Minister\u2019s SAT3 comments confuse"},"content":{"rendered":"

The SAT3\/WASC system has a full capacity of 120 Gb\/s, and while some telecoms experts believe that its current capacity may be sold out they are quite certain that it is far from running at capacity.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cSAT-3\/WASC\/SAFE cable has been designed to operate for a period of up to 25 years. During the life of the cable system, upgrades can be effected which are aimed at increasing the amount of equipped capacity in the system. This is achieved by installing more equipment at cable landing stations,\u201d Telkom said.<\/font> <\/p>\n

While there is no publicly available information as to how much capacity Telkom has on the SAT3 system and exactly what the system\u2019s current full capacity is, it is believed that the system is currently configured at 40 Gbps. <\/font><\/p>\n

This means that the system still has a \u2018spare\u2019 upgrade capacity of 80 Gbps, which in effect means that it is very far from running at \u2018full capacity\u2019.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Most telecoms experts that were contacted said that it is highly unlikely that the capacity on the system is fully utilized. Telkom confirmed this in an official response.<\/font> <\/p>\n

\u201cThe majority of the parties in the SAT-3\/WASC\/SAFE <\/a>consortium have not exhausted their allocated capacity. However the phenomenal growth in broadband has led to increased levels of utilization which have seen the cable system being upgraded to release more capacity for the investors,\u201d said Lulu Letlape, Group Executive for Corporate Communication at Telkom.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Telkom invested $ 85 million in 2002 in SAT3\/WASC\/SAFE which makes it the major shareholder in the system, an investment that has paid great dividends to the telecoms giant. Telkom is also the system\u2019s network administrator. The full system cost an estimated $ 650-million to develop.<\/font> <\/p>\n

The Minister\u2019s comments are thought to be part of her drive to promote the construction of a new submarine telecommunications cable system on the West coast of Africa. <\/font><\/p>\n

While detailed information about this intended cable system is not yet available, it is closely linked to the needs of the projected square kilometer array telescope for which South Africa is bidding.<\/font> <\/p>\n

Discuss this article<\/a> <\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Minister of Communications was recently quoted as saying that the SAT3 cable, running down the west side of Africa, was “at full capacity”. This comment raised some eyebrows in the telecoms community.<\/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-550712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550712"}],"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=550712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}