8/14/2019 Raqueeb Hassan: Africa Connects, Plethora of Submarine Cables!

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Submarine Cables

December 16, 2009

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Africa Connects, Plethora of Submarine Cables!

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 by Raqueeb Hassan

Best weather on planet earth?Having lived there for over a year, Bunia (DRC) stays on top of my list. I do have a soft spotfor Africa, and best part, it has opened up its entire bureaucratic authoritarianism to connectthe world. Well, I know there have been loads of improvements in parts like health care,education and food security, but then I have to cling on to the things when it comes tocommunication.

Dont fall flat when you hear a total of seven (Cable Systems) undersea fibre optic ca bles,with an aggregate capacity of 10.94 terabytes (10,940 gigabytes), have landing stations alongthe entire coast line around Africa. As referred in last September in Allafrica.com , submarinefibre optic cables landing in Africa include SAT-3, 120 gigabytes, Main-one, another cablesystem 1.92 terabytes, Glo-one, 640 gigabytes, East African Submarine Cable System(EASSY), 1.3 terabytes, South Asia Telecom Cable (SEACOM), 1.2 terabytes, The EasternAfrican Marine Systems (TEAMS), 640 gigabytes, and the largest of them all, West Africa CableSystem (WACS), 5.12 terabytes. This WACS, according to another report, the capacity will riseto around 10 Tb/s by the end of 2011, or 120 times the 2008 capacity.

TEAMS, according to the said source, is being constructed at $82 million; EASSY, $235 million;Main One, $240 million, SEACOM, $600 million, whiles WACS, SAT-3 and GLO1 are equallymulti-million dollar projects. It feels great when Africans are reaching out for endlesspossibilities, cutting the bureaucratic channels, common sense regulation, sometimes otherstend to miss.

And, here on the West Coast of Africa, some other cable systems including SAT-3 (14,000km),WACS (14,000km) and Main one (14,000 km) connect Europe to South Africa, stretching fromPortugal, with several landing stations along the western coast of Africa down to the south;Glo1 (9,500km) connects United Kingdom to Nigeria, landing in Spain, Portugal, Morocco,Mauritania, Senegal and Ghana. Can you believe that?

And then, to the East of Africa there is EASSY, which connects South Africa to Sudan, withseveral landing stations along the eastern coast; SEACOM (15,000km) connects France toIndia, with at least seven landing stations in Africa, from South Africa through the easterncoast to Egypt in the north.

According to TEAMS, which is 4,500km long cable system and links Kenya with the United ArabEmirates, with possible (some have come up already) landing stations in Rwanda, SouthernSudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania and Burundi.

http://raqueeb.wordpress.com/author/raqueeb/http://raqueeb.wordpress.com/author/raqueeb/http://raqueeb.wordpress.com/author/raqueeb/http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11682&id=595343771&l=40c159dbcbhttp://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11682&id=595343771&l=40c159dbcbhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congohttp://allafrica.com/http://allafrica.com/http://allafrica.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WACS_%28cable_system%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WACS_%28cable_system%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WACS_%28cable_system%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WACS_%28cable_system%29http://allafrica.com/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Republic_of_the_Congohttp://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=11682&id=595343771&l=40c159dbcbhttp://raqueeb.wordpress.com/author/raqueeb/

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How about a pictorial? At least, you might say, seeing is believing!

It is for real! Africa is connecting! What is it happening there? Click for more.

Let me go back to Stanfords brilliant work on Internet end -to-end performance monitoring

solution at IEPM. This group at Stanford monitors network connectivity and end-to-endperformance for sites involved in Internet2, the U.S. D.o.E funded laboratories, laboratoriesthroughout the world, and Institutes and Universities throughout the world involved in dataintensive science. What else do you see there ?

https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibrehttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibrehttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibrehttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibrehttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibrehttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibrehttps://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibre

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PingER monitors over 165 sites in 50 African countries!

Guess what, just yesterday, Tunisie Telecom has brought digital independence (similarconcept like Digital Bangladesh) to Tunisia by landing the countrys first 100% African -ownedsubsea cable in Europe connects North Africa to Interoutes pan European next -generationnetwork, via Interoutes landing station in Sicily.

The cable system provides Tunisia with an additional route to the Sea-Me-We-4 and Keltrasubmarine cables, providing a redundant and reliable international network for its incumbent,(like BTCL here in Bangladesh) Tunisie Telecom. The cables tota l capacity of 3.2 Terabytes/sis more than seven times greater than that of SEA-ME-WE-4 cable that had been servingTunisia previously. Bangladesh has a lone route to SEA-ME-WE-4.

Too much regulation sometimes kills things. My understanding, light handed approach hasbeen a success case in emerging countries. As per regulation body of knowledge ,

Light-handed regulation allows the firm discretion in how it meets regulatory targets. Regulation thatis not intrusive, in contrast to command and control or even cost of service regulation. This process isdesigned to reduce information requirements and high compliance costs, while introducing clear incentives for good performance.

The report by Joyce Sadka says it all.

For me, its about a simple math on demand and supply !

Happy Victory Day!

http://www.regulationbodyofknowledge.org/glossary/define/Light-handed%20regulation/http://www.regulationbodyofknowledge.org/glossary/define/Light-handed%20regulation/http://www.regulationbodyofknowledge.org/glossary/define/Light-handed%20regulation/http://ideas.repec.org/p/cie/wpaper/0403.htmlhttp://ideas.repec.org/p/cie/wpaper/0403.htmlhttp://ideas.repec.org/p/cie/wpaper/0403.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demandhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demandhttp://ideas.repec.org/p/cie/wpaper/0403.htmlhttp://www.regulationbodyofknowledge.org/glossary/define/Light-handed%20regulation/