The Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network (NBIN) will lay its own East African undersea cable, despite two commercial ventures already on the go, says Department of Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole.
Shope-Mafole says SA would prioritise the NBIN over other commercial ventures to bring low-cost bandwidth to Africa. This cable is linked to government's West Coast cable project, on which the state expects to spend R5 billion.
"I am not against the other cables, but those are commercial ventures and we have not yet set the guidelines about them landing in this country," she says.
There are two commercial cables being planned. The first, the East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), is a consortium of African and several international telecommunications operators, including SA's Telkom and the UK's BT. This cable should stretch for about 9 000km along the coastline and connect every seaboard country.
Eassy is in the final stages of raising the estimated $230 million it needs for construction and it expects to be operational in late 2009, with an initial capacity of 340GB.
The second cable is planned to stretch about 12 000km along the East Coast and onto the Middle East and Europe, and has a planned capacity of 1.2TB. It is being laid by the Seacom private equity venture. Surveying for this cable has started and its route will encompass SA and its neighbouring countries.
Seacom has not revealed details of its capital raising, but The Blackstone Group, the world's largest private equity firm, is behind the project.
The Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network falls under the e-Africa Commission of the African Union and consists of a terrestrial phase, running from SA through Zimbabwe to Rwanda and, possibly, an undersea system as well.
Broadband cost considerations
"I cannot speak on behalf of Eassy; they are welcome to join us or not. However, we feel the commercial ventures will not lower broadband costs and so are not our priority," Shope-Mafole says.
She also says her department would not tell Telkom what to do about its participation in Eassy as the partially state-owned telecommunications operator has a stake of around 11% in that venture.
Twenty-three countries originally signed the NBIN memorandum of understanding, but only 12 have adopted the protocol, while only three have ratified it, namely Rwanda, SA and Zimbabwe.
SA's Parliament ratified the protocol in June and, at the time, chairman of the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Communications Godfrey Oliphant said "post-ratification hearings should be held, as this protocol could prove to be problematic".
Landing rights
Shope-Mafole says should any commercial undersea cable wish to land in SA, its owners would have to apply for such landing rights. However, guidelines for these had not been formulated yet.
"The minister [Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri] will issue a policy directive for such guidelines later this year. Then they will have to apply and be treated just like anyone else."
Shope-Mafole believes it is correct for government to own 100% of broadband infrastructure provider Infraco, and uses the analogy of the public road system.
"Everybody uses the roads at the same price and with the same accessibility, even though government owns them."
Share