Wide open

ADSL South Africa (Broadband South Africa), 20 January 2007

This is how one will shortly be able to describe the international telecoms services' market. Undersea cable projects are under way along Africa’s east coast that will for one result in much cheaper international bandwidth.

Telkom is not very happy about the prospect of additional undersea cable systems that will link South Africa to the rest of the world. Telkom said, “The deployment of two or more cables within the same region will affect the commercial viability of all of them" (Cheap bandwidth at last, Mcleod, 18 January 2007). Truth is that Telkom currently ‘runs the only two cable systems linking SA with global networks’ (Cheap bandwidth at last, Mcleod, 18 January 2007). In other words, Telkom is actually scared that their tendency to keep prices artificially high might get a kick in the butt. Make no mistake, when Telkom talks about negative effects on ‘commercial viability’ they actually mean a ‘robbery’ that went wrong.

One can already see Telkom techies practising their dives along the coast in preparation for an all out war in this regard… blame your bosses at Telkom for the state of affairs.

The latest undersea cable project in the works, called Seat (South East Africa Telecoms), seems to enjoy solid financial support from players like Blackstone , a large US equity firm, and others. Blackstone denies any involvement though.

Other projects like FLAG and Eassy (East Africa Submarine System) also seem to have the tide coming in nicely for them. It’s nice to see that our ‘Naval units’ are preparing for an all out assault...

ADSL South Africa(Broadband South Africa) welcomes any progress in this regard since it will result in cheaper international bandwidth and will help to break Telkom’s stranglehold on the telecoms market.