[kictanet] The EASSy has landed! Landing partner Telkom's ring around Africa

Mon Feb 15 10:55:13 EAT 2010

Seems there is some movement in (not so) EASSy... 

The EASSy has landed!

Landing partner Telkom's ring around Africa

The East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) - one of the nine
undersea telecommunications cables that will connect various parts of
Sub-Saharan Africa to the rest of the world by 2011 - will land at
Mtunzini, on the northern KwaZulu-Natal coastline, tomorrow.
Telkom is the South African landing partner for EASSy. In all, there are
nine EASSy landing stations in Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya,
Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa, with
shore-end landings already having occurred in Mozambique and Sudan.
"EASSy is one of the elements of Telkom's cable investment strategy and
is a key step towards the process of establishing a Telkom fibre ring
capability around Africa," said Alphonzo Samuels, Telkom's Managing
Executive for Wholesale Services.
He added: "EASSy further increases the robustness of Telkom's
international bandwidth offerings and portfolio. Together with other
undersea cables and/or land based fibre routes, EASSy creates redundant
fibre access prospects into East Africa."
EASSy is a 10 000 km undersea cable system currently being constructed
along the east African coastline. Its 1.4 Tbps system design capacity,
coupled with its two fibre-pair configuration, equips EASSy with the
highest capacity of all undersea cable systems along the east coast of
Africa. 
Interconnection with various other undersea international cable systems
will enable traffic on EASSy to seamlessly connect to Europe, North and
South America, the Middle East and Asia, thereby enhancing the east
coast of Africa's connectivity into the global telecommunications
network.
"EASSy is routed from South Africa to Sudan, linking the coastal
countries of East Africa. An extensive backhaul system linking
landlocked countries to the coastal countries has been developed and is
at various stages of completion," stated Samuels, adding that EASSy is
scheduled to be ready for commercial service from August this year.
Samuels explained that submarine cables held many benefits such as
superior transmission quality, considerably lesser delays compared to
satellite, high transmission capacity, access to the global optical
fibre network, lower unit costs (compared to satellite), no
electromagnetic interference and higher resistance against adverse
weather conditions.
"However, activities such as fishing and anchoring, ocean drilling, fish
bites and earthquakes constituted some of the commonly known submarine
cable hazards," cautioned Samuels. 
Various initiatives were nevertheless undertaken to protect submarine
cables. These included conducting ocean bed surveys to select the safest
undersea routes; burying cable in sand where possible, especially at the
shallow end; avoiding heavy shipping lanes when approaching landing
points; selecting safe beaches, bearing in mind that later beach erosion
could expose cables; designing the shortest land cable route for maximum
security; and, manufacturing cables to exceed the 25 year design life of
the cable system.
"Redundancy, protection and - where necessary - restoration are also key
considerations," said Samuels.
He explained: "Redundancy means that we have duplicated equipment at the
cable stations, duplicated power converters, generators, etc. Therefore,
if a single piece of equipment should fail, we have another piece of
equipment standing by to take its place."
Protection ensures that a fully duplicated amount of capacity is
available to re-route traffic on the same cable in the event of an
internal failure impacting only one path or fibre. Protection therefore
implies that for everything that is duplicated, automated switching
takes place.
Samuels added that restoration required traffic to be routed onto other
cable systems via completely different traffic paths and even different
routes. "This usually happens when a complete failure of a cable system
occurs, usually via an external influence such as a ship's anchor
breaking a cable, to the extent that 'in-system' protection on the same
system is not possible."
He also explained that customers have a choice between the regular
international private lease circuits that includes restoration for their
bandwidth or a product that excludes restoration, which would be termed
non-restorable bandwidth or traffic.
"It must be emphasised, though, that in the event of submarine cable
service interruptions, every attempt is always made to expedite customer
services," emphasised Samuels.
Although EASSy will not be commercially active by the time this year's
2010 FIFA World Cup(tm) kicks off in June, Samuels stated that "Telkom's
undersea capacity has been significantly upgraded". "For example, by
end-October last year, SAT-3 and SAFE were upgraded to at least three
times their former capacity." 
He added that SAT3 provided the shortest route to Europe while SAFE was
the shortest link to Asia. From an undersea capacity perspective,
therefore, "it's all systems go for the World Cup," emphasised Samuels. 
As it's investment in EASSy highlighted, Samuels said that Telkom had a
robust strategy with regard to undersea cable investments. The Company's
cable investments included COLUMBUS3, SEA-ME-WE3 (South East Asia-Middle
East-Western Europe), SAT3/WASC/SAFE (South Atlantic Telecommunications
/ West Africa Submarine Cable /South Africa Far East), EASSy, EIG
(Europe India Gateway) and WACS (West Africa Cable System). 
"Our investments are geared by the participation of other operators and
we firmly believe that investment sharing translates to better unit
costs and improved customer prices," he added.
"Ultimately, we believe that EASSy will also go a long way towards
increasing Africa's bandwidth capacity, affordability and create
increased diversity and fibre redundancy between SA and Europe as well
as within East Africa" concluded Samuels.
Issued by:
Group Communication and Brand

<http://www.telkom.co.za/pls/portal/docs/page/contents/archive/legalnoti
ce/TelkomEMailLegalNotice.pdf> 

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