Google’s O3b Networks -vs- EASSy. Fight! Part 2

Kenya south africa Sudan tanzania technology

THREE IF BY SEA

As a testament to the furious and evolutionary nature of technology, the three other projects that have emerged in direct competition to EASSy’s efforts, all tout project duration timelines that are a fraction of EASSy’s molassess effort. They also promise far greater bandwidth than EASSy’s promised 320 gigabits at launch.

SEA Cable System (Seacom), a joint venture that’s 75% “African owned” plans to drop a 1,280 GB line—twice the planned capacity of EASSy—between the UAE and Mtunzini, SA, with contact points scheduled for Maputo, Mombasa, Dar Es Salam, Toliary, and Djibouti. The cable is slated for  a June 1, 2009 completion. Seacom will operate on an open-access model, essentially granting backhaul access rights to investor and non-investor telcos at the same price point. There’s debate on what percentage of saving will end up being passed onto the consumer once the project is completed.

Seacom has also extended the “open-access” policy to the way it disseminates information. The Seacom website includes a library of images detailing the progress thus far, plus additional geeky reading material for those keen on diving into the guts of an undersea cable-landing expedition. Even a cursory cruise acros Seacom’s site paints a sour picture of EASSy’s malignant disorganization

The East African Marine system (TEAMs) was born out of Kenya’s dissatisfaction with the snail’s pace progress of the EASSy pact. The Kenyan government also got impatient with South Africa strong-arming ownership of the EASSy initiative. Two years ago the Kenyan government decided to partner with Emirates Telecommunication Establishment (Etisalat) for a parallel undersea cable initiative, but maintained its commitment to EASSy. While the cable is initially slated to have a smaller launch capacity of 120 GB, the TEAMs cable is meant to immediately serve Kenya and it’s adjacent neighbors and provide an expansion road map for Kenya’s emerging business process outsourcing. The fibre optic cable has a future capacity expansion ceiling of 1,280 gigabytes. Also twice that of EASSy’s promised 640 GB cap.

Finally the dissing of EASSy by previous partners continues. This time in the form of EASSy’s original protocol and policy watchdog, NEPAD. After the two wrangled over usage and ownership of the EASSy trademark, NEPAD renamed it’s new initiative Nepad ICT Broadband Infrastructure Network for East Africa (NBIB), now that’s a mouthful. This later morphed into the mega-conglomerate UhuruNET, or Freedomnet, with a far-reaching goal of encircling the whole continent with a cable. A holding company, Baharicom, was set up to oversee the $2 billion initiative that split the project into two segments; the undersea cable initiative will operate under the UhuruNET trademark while the terrestrial cable network will operate under UmojaNET. On September 8th, 2008, UhuruNET merged with the South Africa-backed Africa West Communications (AWCC). NEPAD will run the new combined effort with a slated June 2010 completion.

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  • Steve Song
    October 17, 2008 at 5:40 am

    Eassy seem to have graduated from also-ran to the front ranks again with their upgrade to 1.4 terabits. Also they appear to have sped up their delivery date. There is an updated map at http://manypossibilities.net/african-undersea-cables/ which is now a permalink for this map.

    Also, see the Economist’s assessment of O3b at http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12437783

    -Steve

  • TMS Ruge
    October 17, 2008 at 5:57 am

    Good to know Steve, I’ll look into it. Hopefully, they’ll stick to the schedule and deliverables.

  • TMS Ruge
    October 17, 2008 at 5:58 am

    Also, Steve, I ran into your colleague here at MobileActive08. It was exciting to see the work you are doing math tutoring over the Mxit engine. Commendable.