The Eassy has landed

THE $250 MILLION East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy) has landed at Mtunzini on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast. It is one of nine undersea telecommunications cables that will connect various parts of Sub-Saharan Africa to the rest of the world by 2011.

From Mtunzini, the cable will run past Mozambique towards Tanzania, where it will connect to the other half of the cable, now being built from Port Sudan on the north eastern coast of Africa.

Eassy is a 10 000 km undersea cable system currently being constructed along the east African coastline. Its 1.4Tbps system design capacity, coupled with a two fibre-pair configuration, is reported to give it the highest capacity of all undersea cable systems along the east coast of Africa.

Telkom is one of the top investors in Eassy and owns 9% of the cable. Another investor is West Indian Ocean Cable Company, which has a special purchase vehicle accommodating a number of smaller African telcos, with funding provided by the World Bank. Sudan's Sudatel, MTN and Vodacom are also major investors.