SEACOM Almost Ready to Go!
SEACOM Undersea Cable
The much anticipated SEACOM cable has been completed and is now in testing phase. 18 months of excitement has come down to this last month of performance testing and configuration of the cable that will connect South Africa and east Africa to Europe, Asia and America.
The finish line is in sight which will soon allow us to reap the benefits of faster internet speeds and cheaper access prices. The CEO of SEACOM hit the nail on the head “we are one step closer to delivering on our commitment and become the first project to provide eastern and southern African retail carriers with equal and open access to inexpensive bandwidth”.
We are still unsure of how the SEACOM cable will benefit us in terms of broadband prices because in the end those prices are governed by the local ISP’s. Neotel are one of the service providers that will benefit the most (their parent company TATA own a share of the SEACOM cable) which will see their offerings either decrease in price or offer more to the end user. We are rooting for the latter as P2P access on all the packages would be great.
The major effect of the SEACOM cable will be felt by the Data Centers. We should see a sharp decrease in local hosting costs within the next month or 2 which is very exciting.
Local startups will benefit from these potential price decreases hopefully allowing South Africa and much of eastern Africa to produce numerous quality startups. The potential benefits seem endless however the actual possibilities may be limited.
(Via Nudjit)
This was posted by Seagyn Davis who has posted 212 items.
