South Africa’s current undersea fiber network
Friday the 16th July 2010 (only 1 year after SEACOM was launched) marked yet another historical broadband moment, through the linking of our very own Mtunzini (“Place in the Shade” – South Africa) to Port Sudan (Sudan). This new cable called the EASSy Cable (http://www.eassy.org), is now live, spanning a distance of over 10,500 km. It has connected 21 countries located in eastern/southern Africa to the rest of the world. This new cable with a capacity of 1.4 Tbps, will (like SEACOM) provide a rapid expansion in infrastructure, decline in cost of facilities, prices for services and offer redundancy to SEACOM users. A bit of history after the break.
A chronological look into the past cables is as follows:
- SAT-1 – Constructed in the 1960′s
- SAT-2 – Brought into service in the early 1990′s, to replace SAT-1
- SAT-3/WASC/SAFE (http://www.safe-sat3.co.za/ – 340 gigabits) began operation in 2001. SAT-3 (The western cable linked South Africa to various other west African countries and finally landing in Portugal and Spain) took up service from SAT-2 which was nearing maximum capacity along the western coast of Africa.SAFE, the eastern cable linked South Africa to Mauritius, India and finally Malaysia, extended along the east coast of Africa.
- SEACOM (http://www.seacom.mu – 1.2 Tbps) began operations in July 2009 (over 8 years later than SAT-3/WASC/SAFE), with nearly four times the capacity of the SAT-3/WASC/SAFE cables. The introduction of this new cable provided a mechanism for ISP’s (Internet service providers) to offer services as a much cheaper rate, it was then that uncapped internet became viable for the majority of end users throughout South Africa.
I like one of many internet users in Africa just cant wait to see the benefits and /or rewards it may bring. Only time will tell.
This was posted by matthew who has posted 12 items.
→ South Africa’s bright broadband future – Techdaily said on: August 16, 2010 at 8:45 am
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