Cheaper Broadband for South Africa

Johannesburg - Businesses and consumers are likely to pay much less for their broadband internet as soon as the $650m, 15 000km-long Seacom undersea cabling system goes live at the end of June.

"The effect is likely to be felt immediately," said Seacom CEO, Brian Herlihy.

Most of South Africa's international bandwidth is trafficked along the SAT3 fibre-optic cable to which Telkom and, since April 2008, Neotel, have exclusive access. This new available bandwidth will remove the duopoly, increase competition, improve the quality of broadband and drive market prices lower.

"The cable will enable a whole lot of people to have access to the internet, especially at grass-roots level, and this will then have an enormous impact on the macro-economy," said director of Digital Bridges, Kate Elphick.

All those previously disenfranchised by poor infrastructure will now be able to connect to the internet and develop themselves as entrepreneurs. Also, access to information will be readily available and government services could be delivered with ease using the internet, said Elphick.

Seacom's 1.2 terabits per second (Tb/s) cable capacity far outweighs Telkom's current 30 gigabits per second (Gb/s) capacity. Even if Telkom were to upgrade its system it would only reach 320 Gb/s, said Arthur Goldstuck, MD of technology research firm World Wide Worx.

With the introduction of Seacom's fibre-optic cabling system, broadband would no longer be a scarce resource but rather a valuable commodity.

Dial-up 'to die away'

Even if broadband prices don't drop immediately, it is likely that data caps will increase, giving consumers more for their money while dial-up systems slowly die away, said Goldstruck.

The laying of fibre-optic cables has already begun in the Red Sea with another group of ships en route to South Africa to begin laying cables in two weeks.

By the middle of February a third set of ships will begin laying cables in India, while a fourth starts laying cables in the Mediterranean Sea in March, said Herlihy.

The cables will run from these three points towards Yemen, with the final joining of the cables, known as splicing, taking place in Yemen around mid-May.

"Seacom is real, the time schedule is real and we have a strong head start on new projects," said Herlihy.

Various cable stations in Asia, Europe and the East Africa have been completed. Station construction in Kenya will be completed by the end of January, Tanzanian stations will be finished by the end of February and South African stations are set to be ready by March 15.

The hiring of operational staff brought the cable system one step closer to completion. International experts advised Seacom to hire a large third national party workforce to run the system, but Seacom had other plans.

"We had resisted this advice and were determined to hire local employees," said Herlihy, "I am very pleased, overwhelmed, with the applications we received and we have hired almost all of our employees out of local markets."