[kictanet] Reliance to build submarine cable to rival EASSy

[Rebecca Wanjiku]

some food for thought before the friday meeting........ 



Reliance to build submarine cable to rival EASSy 

By A CORRESPONDENT 
The EastAfrican 

Reliance Corporation, one of India's largest information technology 
firms, says that it will construct a submarine cable along the 
eastern Africa seaboard by 2009. 

The fibre optic cable, the company said recently, will link South 
Africa and Kenya, and also serve Tanzania, Mauritius, Mozambique and 
Madagascar as well as some land-locked countries. The cable link will 
be laid down by Reliance subsidiary, Flag Telecom 

Last December, Reliance announced that it would invest $1.5 billion 
to put up the world s most extensive Internet access network through 
submarine cables covering more than 60 countries. 

News of the latest plans to lay a cable along the eastern seaboard 
are likely to cause a certain level of alarm among the partner states 
involved with the controversy-prone East African Submarine Cable 
System (EASSy) cable. By last December, only 12 countries out of the 
targeted 23 stretching from South Africa to the Sudan had pledged 
support to the project. 

Proponents of an eastern seaboard fibre optic cable say that it would 
lower Internet slashing bandwidth costs by as much as a third, and 
spur the development of outsourcing centres along the eastern coast 
to compete with similar centres in Asia. 

Valued at $300 million, EASSy itself is planned to run from Mtunzini 
in South Africa to Port Sudan in Sudan, with landing points in six 
countries, and connected to at least five landlocked countries. The 
thinking is that these countries will subsequently no longer have to 
rely on expensive satellite systems to carry voice and data services. 
The project, to be funded largely by the World Bank and the 
Development Bank of Southern Africa, was initiated on January 2003.  

Since inception, however, the EASSy project which is now expected to 
be completed by the end of 2008 has been dogged by disagreements over 
financing and access among partner states, with Kenya opting to sit 
the project out. Kenyan officials were reportedly particularly peeved 
by South African efforts to control the project, reports indicated. 

Last September, Kenya announced that it would seek funding to finance 
its own undersea cable running from Mombasa to Fujairah in the Gulf 
of Oman in a bid to accelerate the emergence of the country a 
business outsourcing centre. The cable, Nairobi said, would be made 
available to any interested party along the way. 

Analysts say that the announcement by Reliance, by introducing a 
third player, could change the dynamics somewhat, raising the 
possibility that the Kenyan government may seek a partnership with 
the Indian multinational to counter-balance the South African-led EAS

http://www.nationmedia.com/eastafrican/current/News/News1902078.htm



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