State-owned Broadband Infraco has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Nepad eAfrica Commission.
This ensures any new West Coast undersea cable becomes part of Uhurunet - the government-driven project that aims to circle Africa with a fibre optic cable.
The agreement will see Uhurunet eventually become part of the West African Cable System (WACS), and dispels perceived conflicts between two government projects, says Broadband Infraco chairman Andrew Mthembu.
At the eighth gathering of the Presidential International Advisory Council on Information Society and Development (PIAC on ISAD) this weekend, Broadband Infraco CEO Dave Smith and Dr Henry Chasia, deputy chairman for the Nepad eAfrica Commission, signed the agreement under which the bodies are to work together.
This MOU follows one signed last Wednesday by Vodacom, Telkom, MTN, Broadband Infraco and Neotel to build a West Coast cable to stretch from Cape Town to the UK.
In the loop
Infraco falls under the auspices of the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) and it seemed at first that Uhurunet, the pet project of the Department of Communications (DOC), would be left out of the loop by the WACS developments.
However, Mthembu says this is not the case.
"The point of the latest MOU is very simple," he says. "It did not make sense to have two government initiatives pulling in different directions. It is not about conflict between two departments, namely the DPE and the DOC, rather it is about which model suits us."
The DPE has championed Broadband Infraco as a means of bringing cheap broadband to the country through the development of undersea cable systems and a terrestrial fibre optic network.
Uhurunet is an outgrowth of Nepad (New Partnership for Africa's Development) and will also include undersea and terrestrial networks, although it aims to eventually circle the whole continent with a fibre optic undersea system. The DOC has been closely aligned with this project.
"WACS will be the best of the original Broadband Infraco African West Coast Cable and Telkom's proposed SAT-4 system. It will have a capacity of 3.8Tb, which is sufficient for the country's needs for more than 10 years," Mthembu says.
Open access
The WACS consortium will be based on the traditional telco model, with the amount of investment directly related to each shareholder's investment and the amount of broadband allocated to each party.
"Uhurunet will participate in a special purpose vehicle that will probably be led by Broadband Infraco," Mtehmbu says.
According to DOC director-general Lyndal Shope-Mafole, Uhurunet is "groundbreaking".
"Nothing like this has been done in the history of telcos, or in the history of the world," she says.
Twelve countries, 10 of which are Southern African Development Community members, have signed the protocol governing Uhurunet, but only six have ratified it.
Now the project will join ranks with commercial players, such as Vodacom, whom Shope-Mafole has praised for its proactive stance in bringing about the WACS agreement.
However, Shope-Mafole is adamant the signatories of the WACS project will have to adhere to open access principles, as prescribed by Uhurunet.
"It is the law, they will have to do it," she says.
Open access, meaning that any telco can obtain access to the cable, whether a shareholder or not, and is able to do this at the same wholesale price as the shareholders, is one of the principles that have been written into the DOC's guidelines for landing undersea cables. However, these guidelines have not yet been gazetted or completed.
Three countries have expressed concrete interest in Uhurunet: SA, Nigeria and Kenya.
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