Competitor for Eassy

Cape Town, 28 Jun 2007

Seacom plans to lay a cable with a capacity of 1 280Gb, four times the initial capacity of the East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy), to be operational by the first quarter of 2009.

Represented in SA by Fever Tree Consulting, the same company that is involved in the turnaround of the Department of Home Affairs, Seacom claims to be a private equity company and refuses to divulge who its backers are.

Last week, Seacom announced it had chartered a ship to survey the cable route. It said potential landing sights would be in SA, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, India and Italy. Another possible landing sight would be in the United Arab Emirates.

"Landing rights are secured either through open access commercial agreements, or through licences in countries with liberalised regulations," says a spokesman for Fever Tree Consulting, on behalf of Seacom.

The connection

According to Seacom, the cable will connect into Indian telecommunications group VSNL's global network and the South East Asia/Middle East West to East 4 cable in the Indian Ocean. This means it will have the ability to interconnect with a large number of submarine and terrestrial cables in Europe.

Eassy has admitted to seeing the Seacom project as a threat to its consortium of African telecommunications companies and international players such as British Telecoms.

Eassy says it will begin constructing its own cable after July, once it has finalised the investments to raise the $230 million (R1.6 billion) needed to get its cable project running. The Eassy cable will have an initial operating capacity of about 320Gb, upgradeable to 640Gb.

Seacom says it sees its cable as being complementary to the Nepad ICT Broadband Infrastructure Network, an African Union project, to develop and see fibre optic cables in the southern and eastern parts of Africa. In SA, this project is driven by the Department of Communications.

According to Seacom, its project operates on open and non-discriminatory principles. It believes a low-cost, high-volume international bandwidth market is sustainable in the region.

Neotel discussions

Seacom says Neotel is not directly involved in the project, but it is discussing a commercial agreement with the second national operator.

As far as linking into land-locked countries' networks, Seacom says it has the capital to construct or establish commercial backhaul from the cable landing stations to the major metropolitan areas in each country. The requirement to construct or set up a commercial relationship would be dependent on the regulatory frameworks and existing infrastructure, it adds.

"All of Seacom's backhaul will be premised on open access and low cost to encourage lower bandwidth cost," the spokesman says.

He says Seacom is seeking guidance and to work with Nepad, the World Bank and carriers for the backhaul to land-locked countries.

"This is an area that Seacom would invest in to the extent that it is a complement to the cable customers and not competing with national carriers," the spokesman says.