[kictanet] TEAMS | EASSY Fibre Cables Cut? SEACOM | LION?

[Michuki Mwangi]

On 2/28/12 9:06 AM, James Mbugua wrote:
> Brian
> 
> TEAMS general manager Joel Tanui said it will take three weeks
> although that may be to avoid over promising.
> 
> I'm told Eassy also has a cut near Djibouti and is currently being repaired.
> 
> Operators now have no option but to switch to the very expensive
> Seacom. By some accounts it is three times as expensive as TEAMS.
> 
> Safaricom which carries 80 per cent of Kenya's internet traffic
> usually has 50 per cent going through TEAMS and has switched this to
> Seacom.
> 

IMHO we need to have a clearer understanding of the bigger picture to
set the long term goals and objectives.

1. Today we import more than 80% of the Internet traffic consumed in
Kenya causing an "Internet Transit Deficit" where significantly less
Internet traffic is generated locally than accessed from overseas,
similar to what was experienced between Europe and the US during the
late 1990’s.

2. We are dependent on a single East-Bound path from "Nairobi - Mombasa
- (Mumbai/Fujaira) before going to Europe. This is despite the fact that
we have terrestrial capacity from Cape Town to Cairo to provide an
North-bound path that would complement the longer path.

3. The BBC article did not mention that, with the Submarine cable cuts
the Internet traffic between the East African Countries Kenya, Tanzania,
Uganda, Rwanda are most adversely affected. My current tests are showing
over 1sec latency from Nairobi to some networks in Tanzania, Rwanda and
Uganda. This is despite the reality that Uganda and Rwanda are largely
dependent on the terrestrial cables passing through Kenya onto the cables.

4. South bound Internet traffic (to Southern Africa) has acquires
satellite like latencies (higher than 500ms). As a result of the cable
cuts. There's more than sufficient capacity terrestrially but we still
have to go to Europe before going back South.

If we can work towards resolving the above issues with concrete plans
and solutions. Its likely that such cable cuts in the future will not
cause the level of attention and anxiety that we see are experiencing today.


My 2 cents.

Regards,

Michuki.