Undersea Cable Systems: EASSy bandwidth available

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 11 August 2010

The next SEACOM crisis might turn out to be a ‘storm in a tea cup’ considering that EASSy bandwidth is now available from MTN and Neotel. It is no secret that the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), currently the fastest undersea cable system serving the African continent, has landed at Mtunzini in Kwazulu Natal earlier this year.

Huge design capacity …

EASSy, which cost more or less USD300m to construct, has a huge design capacity of 3.8Tbit/s. It must however be noted that EASSy is currently running at only 60Gbit/s of its capacity which is much lower than SEACOM’s 1.3Tbit/s.

It seems that the Management Committee of the EASSY consortium is expecting fireworks if one considers the fact that this committee has taken the decision to increase EASSy’s design capacity to 3.8Tbit/s. The Chairman of the relevant committee, Trevor Martins, has made it clear that they expect a “broadband capacity explosion in Africa between 2012 and 2014” and “…expect all of the capacity on the cable to be used” (EASSy bandwidth arrives as capacity is trebled, TechCentral, 5 August 2010). Design capacity is in reference to the maximum obtainable output or capacity that can be achieved within the boundaries set by EASSy’s design.

In other words, while EASSY is currently only running at a fraction of its design capacity, it’s clear that at 3.8Tbit/s it will be running at a huge capacity compared to what’s currently available in South Africa in terms of undersea cable system capacity.

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