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Kenya to Be Linked to Third Telecommunications Cable (Update1)
By Sarah McGregor
July 6 (Bloomberg) -- An undersea telecommunications cable linking Kenya with 21 nations is expected to be operational by next July, said Chris Wood, chief executive officer of the West Indian Ocean Cable Co.
The $260 million East Africa Submarine Cable System will be the third fiber-optic cable connecting the East African country to the outside world. The link, with the capacity to carry 1.4 terabytes of data per second, may slash prices by as much as 80 percent and make connection speeds as much as five times faster, Wood said in an interview on July 3 in Nairobi, the capital.
“We are going to very quickly see a reduction in prices, better quality and improved connectivity especially in landlocked nations,” said Wood.
Kenya currently has 3 million Internet users out of a total population of 37.9 million people, according to the Web site of Internet World Stats. The penetration rate of 7.9 percent compares with 5.6 percent for the whole of Africa, it said.
The East African cable, known as EASSy, will first be installed in Mozambique, followed by the construction of landing stations at ports in Kenya and neighboring Sudan, Wood said.
Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent and Tyco Telecommunication have the contracts to manufacture and lay the 10,800-kilometer (6,712-mile) cable under the sea. The link will stretch from South Africa north to Sudan, including nations such as Namibia, Lesotho, Ethiopia, Zambia and Burundi, to Europe, he said.
Shareholders
WIOCC’s shareholders include 12 African telecommunications companies such as Dalkom of Somalia, Gilat Satcom Nigeria and Telkom Kenya Ltd. Other investors in the EASSy project include British Telecommunications Plc, France Telecom and Telkom South Africa Ltd., according to WIOCC’s Web site.
The completion of EASSy will follow the installation of two rival undersea fibre-optic cables, both of which are set to become operational later this year.
East Africa currently depends on satellite connections for Internet and telephone calls, which can be expensive and slow compared with high-speed submarine cables.
Seacom Ltd., a Mauritian company, plans to switch on its connection on July 23, Chief Executive Officer Brian Herlihy said on June 24. The $650 million cable will link South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia to India and Europe.
The East African Marine System, which runs from Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to the Kenyan port of Mombasa, is due to be switched on in September, Chief Commercial Officer Peter Arina said in an interview on June 15.
Shareholders of the $82 million project include Safaricom Ltd., the Kenyan government, Emirates Telecommunication Technology Ltd., Telkom Kenya, Kenya Data Networks Ltd. and Econet Wireless Kenya Ltd.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah McGregor in Nairobi at smcgregor5@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: July 6, 2009 07:22 EDT

It is good news out of Africa as I had been working Cisco net work since 10 years past..........azim