Seacom in South Africa
South Africa eagerly awaits as the launch date for SEACOM grows near.
The 15,000km undersea fibre-optic cable system that costs over R5-billion and runs from France via East Africa to Mtunzini on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast, will be launched in South Africa in the next 10 days.
SEACOM addresses the international bandwidth bottleneck problem and economically justifies further investments in the quality and price of national bandwidth. The cable system will assist communication carriers in South and East Africa by making international bandwidth available to global networks at wholesale prices.
Due to the enormous amount of bandwidth SEACOM is making available it will increase competition, improve the quality of broadband, drive lower market prices, and support economic growth in Southern and Eastern parts of Africa.
The fibre-optic cables are cheaper than satellites and transform signals into light, enabling them to transmit data over long distances at high speeds. Each fibre carries 128 wavelengths with a 10 Gb/s of capacity, reaching a system transmission capacity of 1.28Tb. The cable itself is about 3-4cm thick with several layers of armouring for protection.
Matthew Tagg, CEO of Web Africa notes,
“Savings from infrastructure improvements such as Seacom will not happen instantly. This would primarily be due to the contract periods involved on existing bandwidth purchases and also the high financial cost of recovery. Furthermore typically only carriers (Such as Neotel, MTN, IS) will purchase bandwidth on SEACOM directly and consumer ISP’s do not have direct access. However the good news is prices will continue to decrease and we should see an increase in allocated bandwidth to end user packages. WA will continue to be affordably priced while maintaining a quality product offering in the coming months.”
The potential benefits of SEACOM are far-reaching. We’re waiting with anticipation to see the full advance of a connected Africa that has access to the same information as the rest of the world.
Imagine the possibility.
