SEACOM (African cable system)
SEACOM is a project that Southern and East Africa via fiber optic cable ( fiber optic cable ) with Europe and South Asia connects and enables broadband applications such as Internet, HDTV and IPTV. The system consists of a combination of land and submarine cables and has a capacity of 1280 Gbit / s On 23 July 2009, the commitment in the context of a common event in the participating countries was demonstrated.
Generally
SEACOM is 75 % owned by African investors, the remaining 25 % is held by Herakles Telecom. The projected total cost is 650 million U.S. dollars.
East Africa has long been expensive and slow satellite links instructed because there was no cable connection to the Internet. The cost of a satellite connection be 7500-12000 U.S. dollars per Mbit / s per month. It is expected that the cost of a connection over fiber about 500 to 800 U.S. dollars per Mbit / s and months will be.
SEACOM is next to EASSy (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System ) and TEAMS ( The East African Marine System ) is the third project with similar objectives.
Infrastructure
Within Africa, South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania and Kenya are connected via a protected ring topology with each other. An additional cable pair connects South Africa with Kenya. These two cable pairs have a total capacity of 1280 Gbit / s
Two other pairs of cables with a capacity of 640 Gbit / s link Kenya with a PoP in Marseilles, France and Tanzania, with Mumbai, India.
A total of 13.7 thousand km submarine cables were laid. When multiplexing the SDH method is used.