R5bn for West Coast sub cable

By Leon Engelbrecht, ITWeb senior writer

Johannesburg, 01 Aug 2007

Government will spend about R5 billion over the next two years to lay a new 6Tb submarine cable.

The cable will be placed between Mtunzini, on the KwaZulu-Natal coast, and Cape Town, where the cable will split with a 3Tb line running to London, in the UK, and another to Fortaleza, in Brazil.

Public enterprises director-general Portia Molefe says at least one leg of the cable must be in place by June 2009, when SA will host the FIFA Confederations Cup as a prelude to the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. Molefe expects the Brazilian leg will be in place first.

With the Confederations Cup kicking off on 14 June, Infraco has 22 months left to plan and implement the scheme; a schedule critics already say will be difficult to keep. This is a concern underlined by Molefe, who says the project is undergoing a "pre-feasibility study".

"That's the timing. We must have the cables up and running by 2009, or at least the South American leg," she says.

'Innovative' funding

Molefe says the cable's funding is also still under consideration. "We are still investigating what we think will be an innovative model," she says, adding this will include state, as well as Nepad (New Partnership for Africa's Development) funding. "Telkom wants to buy a large slice of that capacity and we are happy with that."

Communications director-general Lyndall Shope-Mafole adds the West Coast endeavour is part of a Cabinet-sanctioned initiative to drive down telecommunications prices and provide South Africans with affordable and ubiquitous broadband.

The initiative is also linked to the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network's East African undersea cable, Shope-Mafole says.

Public enterprises deputy director-general Litha Mcwabeni explains the high cost of international connectivity in Africa is the result of the continent's limited investment in submarine cables. This is in comparison to that linking North America with Europe and Asia. Africa does poorly even when compared to Latin America, he notes.

Mcwabeni quoted 2004 International Telecommunications Union figures that showed SA's US dollar cost of 100Kbps as $21.93, versus Japan, Sweden and Korea, where it was a fraction of a dollar.

"The average price is $2 and best practice is 18 US cents," he says, respectively 10 times and 125 times cheaper than in SA. "Our position has not improved since.

"If we want to play in the global economy, we have to make access more available."

Moderation urged

Delegates at the Telecoms World Africa 2007 conference, held in Johannesburg this week, asked whether Africa was in danger of over-building telecoms infrastructure, especially undersea cables.

Telkom's acting chief of marketing and sales Godfrey Ntoele called for moderation when it comes to investing in telecoms infrastructure. "I'm not trying to upset the venture capitalists, but when everyone is gone, operators will be the ones left holding the bag."

Telecommunication de Mozambique MD Salvador Adriano said the rule should be "first come, first served", with only one cable allowed to land. Mozambique supports the Nepad Broadband Infrastructure Network, and this system would marginalise Seacom, he added.

However, other panel participants argued the commoditisation of bandwidth in a starved environment is not a bad thing. It will be a long time before Africa has a glut of bandwidth, they said. Additionally, once bandwidth had been commoditised, operators will be in a position to sell bandwidth-rich services they had previously been unable to provide.