Fergie's Tech Blog

New Fiber-Optic Cable to Wire Africa

Image Source: Red Herring.

It’s called the last link. The roughly 5,000 miles of coastline between Djibouti and South Africa is the longest stretch of land untouched by submarine fiber-optic cable. That means the sub-Saharan African countries bordering the Indian Ocean, which include some of the continent’s most prosperous and stable nations, rely on satellite for the bulk of their Internet connections. Satellite is not only slower than fiber, it’s more expensive. Paying more for Internet access than just about anywhere else in the world doesn’t help the region’s struggling economies.

To solve this problem, a consortium of some 20 state-run telecoms and private businesses including MTN Uganda and Telkom South Africa says it will start laying submarine cable to serve Africa’s east coast as early as 2006. In theory, around 250 million people should have access to cheaper and faster Internet connections by 2007. It sounds like a good plan. But the East African Submarine System (EASSy) will have to avoid the mistakes of a similar submarine cable on Africa’s west coast that has done little to improve Internet access from Senegal to South Africa.

posted by Fergie @ 11/20/2005 01:09:00 PM