By Jennigay Coetzer – Business Day 9 June 2009

Several undersea cable projects are on the go that are expected to increase South Africa’s international bandwidth capacity by more than a hundredfold by the end of 2011 and represent a total investment of some $6 billion
One is the new Seacom undersea cable, which is on track to come into operation on June 27 and connects SA and the east coast of Africa with Europe.
CEO Brian Herlihy says links have already been established between the cable landing point in Richards Bay to a data centre in Johannesburg using Neotel’s national backbone network.
He says Seacom has already started selling international capacity to operators and service providers, most of which will be connecting to the undersea cable through the data centre.
Many more are expected to purchase capacity going forward, including some of the hundreds of service providers that were recently issued with licenses that allow them to set up their own infrastructure.
These service providers will be able to buy international capacity at wholesale prices for the first time.
The Seacom cable extends up the east coast of Africa and Seacom has also established data centres in Nairobi, Kampala in Uganda and Kigali in Rwanda, with links to the cable landing points having been established through local infrastructure providers, such as Alcatel.
The seacom cable has a total capacity of 1.2 terabits per second (Tbps).
It will initially boost international bandwidth by 20 to 40 Gbps in SA and another 20 to 30 Gbps in East African markets.
The take-up of capacity on the cable is expected to increase exponentially.
“There is a pent up demand for international capacity,” says Herlihy.
Arthur Goldstuck, chief analyst at World Wide Worx says the Seacom Cable is one of half a dozen cables that will come into operation over the next year that affect SA and Africa.
These include the West Africa Cable System (WACS), previously known as Infraco, in which Government, Telkom, Vodacom, Nortel and MTN are investing.
It will link SA and west African coastal countries to Europe, offering the highest capacity of all the African undersea cables at 3.8 terabits per second, and it is expected to be completed in early 2011.
Planned landing points include SA, Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Canary Islands, Cameron, Nigeria, Tog, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, Portugal and the UK.
Glo-1 is another new west African undersea cable system that will connect Nigeria to the UK, with additional landing points in Portugal, Ghana, Senegal, and possibly other countries along the way.
It is expected to go live this year with a capacity of 640 gigabits per second.
Another is MainOne, a 1.92 terabits per second cable that will connect Portugal to Nigeria, Ghana, Angola, Gabon, Senegal, Cong, Ivory Coast, Morocco and SA and is scheduled for completion in the second quarter of next year.
In addition, France Telecom-Orange is building the African Coast to Europe (ACE) cable system, which will link 20 west African countries to France, with a possible extension to SA.
Then there is the EASSy cable, which will link SA and east Africa, with landing points in six countries, will provide a capacity of 1.4 terabits per second and is expected to go live in the second half of 2010.
The East Africa Marine System (TEAMS), which will link Mobasa on the cost of Kenya to Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates will have little impact on SA.
“TEAMS was commissioned by the Kenyan government because of Telkom wanting control over the EASSy cable,” says Goldstuck.
SA is currently reliant on the capacity of the existing undersea cable is SAT-3/SAFE/ WASC for international bandwidth.
Telkom currently has the monopoly over SAT-3, which runs from SA to portugal and Spain with landing points in eight countries on the West Coast of Africa and a capacity of 130 gigabits per second.
Another minor existing undersea cable connecting to west Africa is Atlantis-2, which extends from Portugal to Argentina, Brazil, Senegal, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands.
Reports of its capacity vary from just under 20 megabits per second to 40 megabits per second and it has been in operation for about 10 years.
“But nobody talks about this cable, because it only has one point of contact in Africa,” says Goldstuck.
Once all the new undersea cables are in operation, there will be a glut of international bandwidth and there will be a lot of pressure on the telecommunication operators to bring down wholesale prices.
However, other costs will need to be factored into consumer prices, including licensing and the land-based infrastructure needed to carry data between the landing point, the service provider and the customer.
The latter is already happening in SA with Neotel partnering with MTN and Vodacom to build a national fibre infrastructure and similar projects are on the go in other parts of Africa.