Please contact me if you’d like a copy of the map in SVG format.
For a history of African undersea cables, have a look at this presentation. If you’re interested in seeing how these cables are changing access, Stanford University’s PINGer project is monitoring the impact of Seacom and other east coast cables as they come online. Also check out the UbuntuNet Alliance’s map of terrestrial fibre in Africa. Finally, for a more comprehensive look at undersea cables, check out Greg Mahlknecht’s map of undersea cables.
| Seacom | EASSy | TEAMs | WACS | MainOne | GLO1 | ACE | SAex | WASACE | BRICS | |
| Cost (millions of USD)
|
650 | 265 | 130 | 600 | 240 | 800 | 700 | 500 | ? | ? |
| Length (km)
|
13,700 | 10,000 | 4,500 | 14,000 | 7,000 | 9,500 | 14,000 | 9,000 | 9,000 | 34,000 |
| Capacity
|
1.28 Tb/s | 4.72 Tb/s | 1.28 Tb/s | 5.12 Tb/s | 1.92 Tb/s | 2.5 Tb/s | 5.12 Tb/s | 12.8 Tb/s | 40 Tb/s | 12.8 Tb/s |
| Completion
|
July 2009 | July 2010 | Sept 2009 | Q3 2011 | Q2 2010 | Q3 2010 | Q2 2012 | Q2 2013 | 2014 | 2014 |
| Ownership
|
USA 25%
SA 50% Kenya 25% |
African
Telecom Operators 90% |
TEAMs (Kenya) 85%
Etisalaat (UAE) 15% |
Telkom
Vodacom MTN Tata (Neotel) Infraco et al |
US Nigeria, AFDB | France Telecom et al See below for full list |
? | ? | ? |
Investor detail:
Seacom (http://www.seacom.mu)
Industrial Promotion Services (25%), an arm of the Aga Khan Fund for Economic Development (USD 75 million)
(Kenya – founded by Prince Karim Aga Khan IV of Pakistan)
VenFin Limited (25%) – USD 75 million)
Herakles Telecom LLC (backed by Blackstone) (25%), New York-based lead company, no website (USD 75 million)
Convergence Partners (12,5%) – USD 37.5 million
Shanduka Group (12.5%) – USD 37.5 million
EASSy (http://www.eassy.org/)
EASSy is 90% African-owned although that ownership is underwritten by a substantial investment by Development Financial Institutions (DFIs) including World Bank/IFC, EIB, AfDB, AFD, and DfW. Total DFI investment is apparently $70.7 million, with $18.2 million coming from IFC, 14.5 million from AfDB. This is a smaller amount than the originally advertised $120 million investment from DFIs.
South African investors in EASSY include Telkom/Vodacom ($18.9 million) , MTN ($40.3 million), and Neotel (~$11 million).
WIOCC, an SPV created to facilitate open access is the largest shareholder, with 29%. WIOCC consortium members include: Botswana Telecommunications Corporation, Dalkom Somalia, Djibouti Telecom, Gilat Satcom Nigeria Ltd., the Government of Seychelles, the Lesotho Telecommunications Authority, ONATEL Burundi, Telkom Kenya Ltd., Telecommunicacões de Mocambique (TDM), U-COM Burundi, Uganda Telecom Ltd., Zantel Tanzania and most recently, TelOne Zimbabwe and Libyan Post, Telecom and Information Technology Company (LPTIC)
Other investors in the system include Bharti Airtel Limited of India, British Telecommunications, Etisalat of the United Arab Emirates, France Telecom, Mauritius Telecom, Saudi Telecom Company, Comores Telecom, Sudan Telecom Company, Tanzania Telecommunications Company, Telecom Malagasy, Zambia Telecommunications Company, Zanzibar Telecom.
TEAMs
85 per cent of the cable is owned by TEAMs (Kenya) Ltd and the rest by Etisalaat of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The TEAMS (Kenya) Ltd holding breaks down as follows:
- 42.5% – Telkom Kenya Ltd
- 22.5% – Safaricom Ltd
- 10% – Kenya Data Networks Ltd
- 10% – Econet/Essar Telecom Ltd
- 5% – Wananchi Group
- 3.75% – Jamii Telecom Ltd
- 1.25% – Broadband Access/AccessKenya Ltd
- 1.25% – Africa Fibrenet (Uganda) Ltd
- 1.25% – InHand Ltd
- 1.25% – iQuip Ltd
- 1.25% – Flashcom Ltd
West African Cable System (WACS)
- Telkom
- Vodacom
- MTN
- Tata Communications (Neotel)
- Broadband Infraco
- Cable & Wireless
- Portugal Telecoms
- Congo Telecoms (formerly Sotelco)
- Telecom Namibia
- Togo Telecom
- OCPT (Office Congolais des Postes et Telecommunications)
- Angola Telecom
MaIN OnE
Privately owned. On June 1, 2009, the African Development Bank confirmed USD 66 million financing for the project.
Africa Coast to Europe (ACE)
ACE consortium signatories:
- Baharicom Development Company
- Cable Consortium of Liberia
- Companhia Santomense de Telecomunicações
- Côte d’Ivoire Telecom
- Expresso Telecom Group
- France Telecom
- Gambia Telecommunications Company
- International Mauritania Telecom
- Office Congolais des Postes et Télécommunications
- Orange Cameroun
- Orange Guinée
- Orange Mali
- Orange Niger
- PT Comunicações
- Republic of Equatorial Guinea
- Republic of Gabon
- Sierra Leone Cable Company
- Sonatel
- Sotelgui
The time for WACS to be ready seems to have come:
SA’s giant new sub-sea cable is here
“The 14 000km West African Cable System (Wacs), the first new sub-sea telecommunications cable along Africa’s west coast since Sat-3 was launched 11 years ago, will be launched officially in about a month’s time.”
http://www.techcentral.co.za/sas-giant-new-sub-sea-cable-is-here/30948/
Good Good news. But is Telkom geared to release the bandwidth commercially?
When will they upgrade the ailing 384K consumer DSL to something such as (heaven forbids!!!) 1Mbps?
[...] his blog, Steve Song, founder of Village Telco gives a great overview of undersea cables providing intercontinental broadband connectivity for Africa. While the North of Africa is [...]
Just got the following hit on Google Alerts.
http://www.subtelforum.com/articles/2012/brics-cable-unveiled-for-direct-and-cohesive-communcations-services-between-brazil-russia-india-china-and-south-africa/
I know! The SA to Asia leg is plausible but another cable to Brazil?
Seems insane, but there is a number of cables that connect South America to their northern continent as well as the Caribbean islands.
According to what I have read the Africa/S.America cable will be connected to the USA and Europe in turn with the same speed specification.
Indeed there is plenty of capacity going north from Fortaleza and it makes lots of sense for one, maybe two cables, but four?
Yes subseaworldnews.com is also running a great article on the new BRICS cable
http://subseaworldnews.com/2012/04/17/brics-unveils-new-submarine-cable-system/
I understand that BRICS is still looking for investors. Anyone heard differently?
In my opinion, any cable that doesn’t have ships in the water laying cable, is still looking for investors. I think that applies to BRICS, to WASACE, to SAEx, to the Telebras/Angola Cables project, and to the southern half of the ACE cable.
Thanks for the updated map Steve. Looks great!
Steve, isn’t the “brazil-russia-INDIA-china-south africa” cable supposed to connect to India somewhere? In your map it looks like it goes straight to Singapore and dodges India… Apart from that, great map as ever. Logarithmic scaling, very clever.
Good point. Wasn’t paying attention to the fringes of the map. I’ll correct that. Thanks for pointing it out!
[...] Many Possibilities Related Posts :Japanese Whalers Head HomeAfter spending more of their time following Sea [...]
[...] African Undersea Cables « Many Possibilities [...]
We are cautiously optimistic! This will certainly transform the technological landscape of my country if implemented properly and is made affordable to the masses.
Steve, it may help readers to distinguish between those cables that are live vs those in the planning stages. As it stands at the moment the map shows a number of cables that may never happen…perhaps have them as “dotted lines”?
Hi Chris. This has always been as much a map of the possible as the actual and the legend does indicate which are live and which not. But I think you have a point. I have experimented in the past with different ways of display current versus planned but none of them have really been terribly satisfactory. Here are a few things I have tried.
Dotted Lines
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ssong/6322057930/
Lines with transparency
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ssong/6324683515/
Monochrome Lines
https://secure.flickr.com/photos/ssong/6328436959/
Grateful for any feedback or suggestions for what you think might work. And what to do with a cable that might only get half-completed like ACE?
I don’t really like any of the three, I think the map is good the way it is now. But if I’d have to choose, I’d go with option 2 “Lines with transparency”.
This just came across my email.
http://www.techcentral.co.za/the-inside-story-of-the-15bn-brics-cable/31530/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+co%2FUqJF+%28TechCentral%29
I guess you’ve seen this one too:
http://www.bricscable.com/services.html
No I haven’t…
They seem very hasty with the BRICS cable, and seeming that it would be government funded, it might come quicker than expected.
That Russian cable needs to travel a bit before it will get anywhere close to Moscow where most of their population lives.
WACS went live at 12 noon in Capetown South Africa on the 11th of May 2012, is it live for Namibia?
I ask because I had very unstable internet from 2pm to 5pm today. (the 11th of May)
I see no difference in qaulity. Latency to servers in South Africa and Europe both remain unchanged.The network is still unstable, with spikes in responce time during the daytime as pre-usual. So is WACS live in Namibia?
I can only find confermations about South Africa’s WACS being live.
(I could not post here yesterday for some reason – it is now now the 12th and I have just as much lag and lag spikes as ever)
WACS is active:
http://allafrica.com/stories/201205120021.html
http://www.techcentral.co.za/650m-wacs-lights-up-africas-west-coast/31744/
“Adrian Moss, chairman of the Wacs management committee, says the cable was originally meant to go live in 2011, but that this was impossible due to legislative changes, civil unrest and other unforeseen circumstances in some of the nations involved in the project.”
Q&A with Bert Stangl, Executive Vice President, Project & CFO of Submarines at Alcatel-Lucent:
http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2012/05/wacs-goes-live-in-cape-town/
Im not so sure, I read all those already;
“Neotel GM of strategic business development Angus Hay says that latency tests on the Wacs system carried out earlier this year from the Yzerfontein in SA to Highbridge in the UK measured a round trip delay of 138,5ms, the lowest achieved so far over such a transoceanic distance.”
How come my reponse times have not changed?
There are many posts Clearly stating that its indeed live in SA, but not a single post stating that Namiba’s Wacs is live. I am still suffering from Lag, everything is exactly still the same as it was.
If I were an ISP I would only be using WACS for backup/redundancy until it was clear that all the bugs have been shaken out of the cable. Also, many ISPs have existing contracts for access on other routes. They may wait until those contracts expire before switching over to WACS.
It would be very neat to have a little desktop utility that could tell you which cable you were on by virtue of a traceroute or similar.
Why dont you make us one?
jj
Tracing route to http://www.l.google.com [74.125.132.106]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms fritz.box [192.168.178.1]
2 32 ms 32 ms 30 ms WVS-7301-BR01-IPB-41-205-152-130.ipb.na [41.205.
152.130]
3 33 ms 30 ms 31 ms 41.205.155.1
4 47 ms 49 ms 48 ms KHP-BOR05-KHP-PE05-TenGE [41.205.155.194]
5 222 ms 221 ms 223 ms bru-22-r23-p0-3-2.car.belbone.be [80.84.23.9]
6 238 ms 239 ms 239 ms 94.102.160.63
7 226 ms 225 ms 225 ms bru-22-r5-t7-3.car.belbone.be [80.84.18.83]
8 230 ms 230 ms 230 ms 94.102.162.201
9 298 ms 256 ms 249 ms 94.102.162.208
10 242 ms 244 ms 243 ms 74.125.50.21
11 237 ms 265 ms 311 ms 209.85.240.63
12 249 ms 246 ms 234 ms 209.85.253.92
13 243 ms 243 ms 242 ms 72.14.232.134
14 239 ms 239 ms 244 ms 209.85.252.83
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 238 ms 239 ms 239 ms wb-in-f106.1e100.net [74.125.132.106]
I ran a trace route, it doesnt go through South Africa like it used to but directly to Europe, so its seems to be live.. Yey.. Wacs is here..
Sorry for tripple post.. If I run a speedtest, I get 460ms reponce time to London England, but I get 260 to Munich Germany. Isnt that Wrong, since the Cable connects directly to London England?
[...] David also sent me off to check out what was happening undersea. Here’s what is projected to happen by 2014, from Steve Song’s excellent ManyPossibilitie…: [...]