Costly international bandwidth and a lack of competition in the submarine cable space has been a common theme when discussing factors keeping South Africa back in terms of broadband penetration and pricing.<\/p>\n
Over the last few months Seacom has been receiving a great deal of press coverage as the provider which will end Telkom’s SAT-3 monopoly and provide South Africa with bountiful cheap international bandwidth. Seacom is however not the only system in the pipeline.<\/p>\n
Shuttleworth Foundation fellow Steve Song has been keeping tabs on the various African undersea cables<\/a> on his Many Possibilities Blog<\/a>. Song lists Seacom, EASSy, TEAMs, WACS, MaIN One, GLO1 and ACE as seven projects in various stages of progress.<\/p>\n The $650milliom, 1.28Tbps Seacom cable will be completed first and is expected to land in June this year. While the cable is accompanied by a great deal of hype it may be well deserved as it is one of the only projects which stuck to its initial deadlines and made its proposed bandwidth pricing publicly available.<\/p>\n EASSy, which will cost in the region of $265 million and have a capacity of 1.4terabits, has been dogged by Government interference and delays in the past. There seems to be a newfound interest in the project from the private sector, and it is now expected to become operational in mid-2010. <\/p>\n Another cable of a great deal of interest to South Africans is the West African Cable System (WACS) which will connect South Africa to Europe. This cable system will have a capacity of 3.84Tbps and is expected to be operational sometime in 2010.<\/p>\n The $400 million, 14 000km MainOne submarine cable aims to provide international and Internet connectivity to countries between Portugal and South Africa on the West coast of Africa. This 1.92Tbps open access submarine system is expected to be fully operational by late 2010, and will compete directly against SAT-3.<\/p>\n Cable systems like GLO-1, TEAMs and ACE are of less importance to South Africa as they will not terminate on local shores.<\/p>\n