Landlocked countries connect to Seacom cable

Landlocked countries in Southern and East African are now assured of high-speed bandwidth capacity following connection agreements between the undersea cable consortium Seacom and ISPs.

The Seacom consortium has signed agreements with Altech of South Africa and New Artel of Rwanda to provide connectivity to landlocked countries with high-speed bandwidth capacity. New Artel is a government-owned ISP providing Internet services to government ministries and departments.

Through New Artel, Seacom will use Rwanda's national fiber-optic backbone to connect high-speed bandwidth to Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Altech-Seacom agreement call for the two companies to buy capacity from one another.

The deal sees Seacom buy capacity on a terrestrial network owned by Altech's Kenya subsidiary, Kenya Data Networks. In turn, Altech will also be buying capacity from the Seacom cable. Altech's terrestrial cable will therefore allow Seacom to deliver its international capacity to operators in landlocked countries in order to provide high-speed Internet connectivity.

Mozambique and South Africa are the only two countries in Southern Africa that currently have connections to the Seacom cable as the cable has landing stations in the two countries. In July this year, Seacom switched on its high capacity cable linking East and Southern Africa to India and Europe. Since then, Seacom has been pushing to connect most landlocked countries to the cable before the EASSY project that has a consortium of operators from landlocked countries becomes operational in June next year.

"This is the type of competition that we need in the broadband market that will eventually result in the reduced cost of communication in the African region," said Edith Mwale, African Center for ICT development program officer.

ICT experts believe that the Seacom deal will allow Altech to play a leading role in changing the face of Africa connectivity.

Kenyan Data Networks carries voice and data services for telecom operators in East Africa and is the region's largest data network infrastructure supplier. As a result of increased investment in the company, Altech now wants to expand further into other African regions.

The inland networks of Kenya Data Networks will link the Seacom landing station in Mombasa to Nairobi and then connect Kampala in Uganda and Kigali in Rwanda. At the same time, Seacom will be using New Artel of Rwanda to connect other countries in the region.

Last month, Seacom signed another US$38 million agreement with Abari Communications consortium of Botswana to provide capacity to the country through existing fiber-optic cables in Botswana.