Many of us geeks have been waiting with baited breath for the Seacomm, its landed and will be avaialable on 27 June 2009.
The quiet tourist area of Mtunzini, 140km north of Durban on the North Coast, in addition to its scenic beaches and  bird watching, now boasts the most internet bandwidth in South Africa.
Seacom has a speed of 1,28 terabits per second (Tbps) — 32 times that of Sat3, our current Telkom pipe. The monopoly of Telkom has kept our local South African telecommunications prices the highest in the world. The first peeps to benefit from Seacom – our universities – will pay one-hundredth of the current cost on Telkom’s cable. Eish!
Expect broadband price to come down over the next 24 months. Seacom’s CEO Brian Herlihy said that much progress had been made in the groundbreaking $650 million project.
“With the system substantially completed and testing already under way, we are one step closer to delivering on our commitment. SEACOM is set to become the first project to provide eastern and southern Africa with equal and open access to inexpensive bandwidth.
“This is going to have a huge catalytic economic impact on South Africa and, more especially, East Africa, connecting several countries in the region to the rest of the world via hubs in London and India.
“In about a month, southern and eastern Africa will finally get truly connected to international broadband networks.
“Readily available bandwidth will result in lower telecommunications costs and new opportunities across many sectors, in particular the call centre and business process outsourcing industries.
“This means that South Africa will finally be part of the high speed internet highway with true broadband capabilities – such as HDTV and multi-media over the internet – in the near future.”
Thanks Brian. I can’t wait
About Haroun Kola
