[kictanet] Fibre Optic Cables

[bitange at jambo.co.ke]

Dear All,
Below find a Wall Street Journal article on Fibre Optic.  We have made
significant progress in Teams.  Having met all the requirements, work is
to start anytime now and finished a head of any cable to our region.  The
Good news is that Etisalat (our partners in Teams) in conjunction with
Akamai are building an Internet Point of Presence (POP) in Fujaira thus
eliminating long distance needs for Internet in this region.  For
telephony, Etisalat have given Teams unbeatable prices in their e-cable
and IMEWE to Europe.

Ndemo.


 Internet Logjams Spur Cable Boom --- Outages in Mideast Expose Global
Need For Fast Fiber Lines
 By Christopher Rhoads
 2024 words
 8 February 2008
 The Wall Street Journal
 A1
 English
 (Copyright (c) 2008, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)



 Seven years after a telecom boom and bust created a glut of fiber optical
cable and destroyed $2 trillion in stock-market wealth, another building
binge is on.
 Over the past 18 months, more than a dozen telecom companies have begun
laying billions of dollars worth of undersea fiber cable. The projects
this time connect areas largely bypassed a decade ago: the emerging
economies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, as well as isolated
places such as Greenland.
 The buildup comes as four cable outages in the Middle East -- two off the
Mediterranean coast of Egypt and two in the Persian Gulf -- recently
disrupted Internet connections across the region and as far away as
India. The cuts throttled Egypt's connections outside the country by 70%,
hampering international banks and curtailing trading on the country's
stock exchange. India, whose huge outsourcing industry depends on the
Internet, lost half its capacity.
 The kinks threw into stark relief the importance of these elaborate cable
connections -- and their vulnerability. The likely result: Even more
fiber building, as increasingly Internet-dependent companies and nations
in the region seek reliable connections.
 Long-haul fiber is the conduit of globalization. Even in a "wireless"
era, it is this physical labyrinth of cables that now carries the bulk of
Internet, wireless and fixed-line traffic. Fiber has eclipsed satellite
technology as the main means of long-distance communication -- enabling
interaction between the world's businesses, governments and economies.
 The recent cable outages "prove the point that we sh