Bandwidth service provide Seacom has said that the undersea fibre optic cable that is to link Southern and East Africa with India and Europe has reached financial closure with investors committing finance to the project and that production of the components for the cable – the fibre-optic cable itself and the undersea facilities – would start next week.
The submarine telecommunications cable, costing US$650-million, will be more than 15 000km long – from Mtunzini in South Africa, linking Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania and Kenya, and landing in Mumbai, India, and in Marseilles, France. It will be in operation by June 2009.
According to Seacom, South African investors hold 50% of the shares and African investors more than three quarters, with agreements with service providers in place or being finalised. This complies with the conditions drawn up by Minister of Communications Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri who stated that in order to come ashore in South Africa the cable had to be owned by a majority of African shareholders.
The Seacom investors are Industrial Promotion Services (IPS – 25%), Venfin (25%), Herakles Telecom (25%), Convergence Partners (12.5%) and Shanduka (12.5%). Nedbank Capital and Investec will be providing financing for the project.
IPS, a development agency based in Kenya, is an arm of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development; Shanduka is Cyril Ramaphosa’s investment house; while Convergence Partners is a group of black investors led by Andile Ngcaba, chairman of Dimension Data Africa and a former director-general of the Department of Communications. New York-based Herakles Telecom is a development group that has invested US$4-billion in Africa.
Communications network provider Neotel is investing R20-million in the South African section of the cable – in the cable landing station and the facilities in South African territory.
Seacom has already invested more than US$10-million in the marine survey and engineering of the cable.
It is likely that Seacom will be the only cable constructed in time to give South Africa the international bandwidth capacity to successfully broadcast the 2010 Soccer World Cup. The cable will have a design capacity of 1.28-terrabytes per second – 10 times that of the existing Sat-3 cable around Africa’s west coast – in order to support the forecast increase in demand for bandwidth beyond 2010.
Its objective is to bring down prices of broadband connectivity for businesses, institutions, communities and individuals in Africa. Terrestrial links will be built to take bandwidth to landlocked countries.
The Seacom consortium has indicated that it will charge other voice and data carriers less for its bandwidth than they pay for Sat-3 or satellite services. This should result in a huge decrease in costs of phone calls, Internet access and data transmissions for African consumers.
Convergence Partners chairman Ngcaba said that improved access for consumers – businesses and individuals – in Africa to communications, broadband services and new technology offerings could improve lives and help grow the economies of African countries. He added that the linking of Southern and East Africa with India and Europe was crucial for enhancing development and trade between these regions.
