Johannesburg, 18 Jun 1999
Telkom and its partners yesterday formalised their agreement to circle Africa with an 80Gb fibre optic cable. The 28 000km cable will link Malaysia to Portugal via SA.
The project consists of two cables, the South Africa - Far East (SAFE) and the West Africa Submarine Cable (WASC), also known as the South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3) cable. The two will meet near Cape Town to create a single entity, called SAT-3/WASC/SAFE.
Telkom CEO Sizwe Nxasana says construction will begin almost immediately and the cable is due to start operation in the first quarter of 2001. It is expected to carry a price tag of $600 million, which will be funded by the 40 participating nations.
The idea, Nxasana says, is to keep African money from heading for Europe. "Nearly 80% of Africa`s telecommunication revenue currently flows out of the continent," he said at the ceremony.
But while Africa may supply the bulk of the partners, European and American firms have not been left out in the cold. Among the signatories were representatives of AT&T, MCI WorldCom, British Telecom and Marconi of Portugal.
The revenue from the cable could be substantial. It promises a hearing delay of 60 milliseconds between Europe and SA, compared to the 250 milliseconds of a typical satellite connection. Telkom says the quality will be superb because of the 430 repeaters on the cable, and it claims the transmission will be more secure than most other forms of communication.
The consortium says that SAT-3/WASC will provide "a telecommunications channel catering for Africa`s international connectivity requirements for at least the next 25 years". SAT-3, however, is a replacement for the SAT-2 cable constructed in 1993. At the time it was considered to be sufficient to "cater for telecommunications requirements for the next 20 years". SAT-2 is now expected to be fully utilised before SAT-3 can come into operation.
That must be a sign of hope for Africa ONE, a private consortium planning its own cable. A US company working with two US partners, Africa ONE seems a textbook example of the very thing Nxasana is trying to avoid. It says it will build a "fibre optic ring around Africa" at a price of $1.6 billion. The project is due for completion by 2002.
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