Submitted by emkamau on Thu, 09/03/2009 - 00:03
The first of three under-sea fibre optic cables being laid on the eastern seaboard of Africa has gone live in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa.
It is widely believed that the cheap bandwidth that the sea cable is coming with will open up opportunities for governments and business community to compete globally and drive economic growth.
The US$650 million, 1.28 terabytes per second (Tb/s) 1,700 kilometre cable system links southern and eastern Africa to global networks via India and Europe. Backhauls linking Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kampala with the coastal landing stations have been established and SEACOM is also working with its national partners to commission the final links to Kigali, Rwanda and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia shortly.
Brian Herlihy, the Chief Executive Officer SEACOM said the cable opens up unprecedented opportunities, at a fraction of the current cost. Today, one megabyte per second (Mbps) connection per month costs between $2,500 and $5,000 but SEACOM plans to sell a megabyte at between $50 and $150.
Good News
This is great. Its time African countries got around to doing this sort of thing.
YAY!