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The East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy) will introduce real pricing pressure into SA's and the continent's international connectivity, say Telkom executives.
The $250 million cable today starts its journey from Mtunzini, on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast, past Mozambique towards Tanzania, where it will connect to the other half of the cable, which is now being built from Port Sudan, on the north eastern coast of Africa.
Telkom's managing executive for wholesale services, Alphonso Samuels, gave an indication of the type of pricing service providers could expect. “Already pricing on the SAT-3
(Telkom's west coast cable) has fallen by 90%, since 2002. The price for an STM-1 (155Mbps) connection is now R1 million for a full restoration, while it is about R599 000 for a service that is unrestored,” he says.
According to Samuels, a restoration service is when Telkom guarantees that data being transmitted over the cable can be fully restored if a break occurs; while an unrestored service does not provide this facility.
Eassy is a 10 000km undersea cable system being constructed along the east African coastline. Its 1.4Tbps system design capacity, coupled with its two fibre-pair configuration, equips Eassy with the highest capacity of all undersea cable systems along the east coast of Africa.
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