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The cable has been brought ashore at Mtunzini near
Durban, links India to SA and runs up Africa’s east
coast to the Middle East and Europe. Tests are under way
to ensure all connections in the 17000km cable are fully
operational and optimum traffic flow is achieved before
its commercial launch on June 27.
Stretching 17,000km down the east coast of Africa along
the ocean floor, where it is buried in some places, the
cable is thickly wrapped in insulation and even armoured.
But when it comes up through a hole in the floor of an
air-conditioned server room, the business part of it is
a yellow wire no bigger than my finger. The three fibre
optic cables inside it are each the width of a human
hair. It’s worth staring at. Modern technology really is
remarkable, even if we’re all so familiar with its
benefits.
Neotel will run the landing station in SA and deliver
capacity nationwide. Herakles Telecom CEO Brian Hehlihy
said it was working to ensure cross-country networks
were built to carry its capacity inland. Those backhaul
cables were being laid to Johannesburg, Kampala, Kigali
and Nairobi.
Dodging Pirates
The much publicized project went through a quiet period
at one point, as the cable was laid off the horn of
Africa. “The pirates have media savvy. You wouldn’t
think in a modern world, you would have a board agenda
item that said “pirates” joked CEO of Herakles Telecom
Brian Herlihy.
What is the impact for South Africa and especially for
East Africa?
It will be the first cable to provide eastern and
southern African retail carriers with open access to
inexpensive bandwidth. CEO Brian Herlihy says that it
promises to end the dearth of bandwidth that has kept
prices high and data transmission down for African
countries. Savings of between 40%-50% are now
achievable, depending on the profit margin operators
buying Seacom bandwidth, including Vodacom and Internet
Solutions, want. And of course, SA’s cellular networks
needing upgrading will benefit from the huge
international capacity about to arrive.
For East Africa the impact is even greater. Communities
in Africa are all depending on information and
communications technology infrastructure as a catalyst
for development.
Why all the excitement over Seacom?
While several other undersea cables are being planned,
not all may materialize due to the enormous costs
involved. Some government-led projects risk being sunk
by the complexity of trying to include many governments
in the initiatives.
Seacom was initiated by US-based Herakles Telecom. It
diluted its own stake down to 23.75% to bring in outside
funding and comply with SA’s demand for any cable
landing in the country to be majority African owned.
Compiled in part from an article “Seacom on track for
its switch-on” in the IOL Newsletter
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REFLEX