The East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy) will introduce real pricing pressure into SA's and the continent's international connectivity, say Telkom executives.
Tomorrow will see the $250 million cable begin its journey from Mtunzini, on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast, past Mozambique towards Tanzania, where it will connect to the other half of the cable, which is now being built from Port Sudan, on the north eastern coast of Africa.
At a press briefing today, Telkom's managing executive for wholesale services, Alphonso Samuels, gave an indication of the type of pricing service providers could expect. “Already pricing on the SAT-3 (Telkom's west coast cable) has fallen by 90%, since 2002. The price for an STM-1 (155Mbps) connection is now R1 million for a full restoration, while it is about R599 000 for a service that is unrestored,” he says.
According to Samuels, a restoration service is when Telkom guarantees that data being transmitted over the cable can be fully restored if a break occurs; while an unrestored service does not provide this facility.
Eassy is a 10 000km undersea cable system being constructed along the east African coastline. Its 1.4Tbps system design capacity, coupled with its two fibre-pair configuration, equips Eassy with the highest capacity of all undersea cable systems along the east coast of Africa.
Telkom is one of the top investors in Eassy and owns 9% of the cable. Other investors include West Indian Ocean Cable Company, which has a special purchase vehicle accommodating a number of smaller African telcos, with funding provided by the World Bank. Sudan's Sudatel, MTN and Vodacom are also major investors.
“Eassy is routed from SA to Sudan, linking the coastal countries of East Africa. An extensive backhaul system linking landlocked countries to the coastal countries has been developed and is at various stages of completion,” says Samuel.
He says the cable is scheduled to be ready for commercial service from August.
Although Eassy will not be commercially active by the time the 2010 Fifa World Cup kicks off, in June, Samuels says Telkom's undersea capacity has been significantly upgraded. “For example, by end-October last year, SAT-3 and SAFE were upgraded to at least three times their former capacity.”
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