The East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), one of the
undersea telecommunication cables that will
connect sub-Saharan Africa to the rest of the world came
ashore at Mtunzini on the Zululand coast on Monday
15 February. The French cable laying ship Ile St Batz,
which late last week called at Durban harbour, assisted the
landing. The Durban branch of Sturrock Shipping supported Ile
St Batz's Durban Port call which was made for the purpose of taking
supplies and bunkers.
Sturrock Shipping was successful in securing the agency
for the EGS survey work on the cable route and subsequently
for the cable layer as well as the landings from
Alcatel-Lucent and Alda Marine.
Our projects handling experience, coupled with our unrivaled
coverage of East African ports and our ability to offer centralized
operational and financial control were all factors that contributed
to our appointment as East African agents for this prestigious and
challenging project.
Once ashore, the EASSy cable is being connected to the
South African communications grid via Telkom, which will act
as the 'wholesaler' for various service providers. The actual
cable consists of four hollow fiber optics, which have
the capability to handle 16 million phone calls simultaneously
at a rate of 10 gigabytes a second.
The total length of the
EASSy submarine cable is 10,000 km, stretching from South
Africa to Djibouti from where it is connected to another
cable into southern Europe.
EASSy's task is to deliver improved connectivity to southern
and East African countries. Until recently the east coast of
Africa had no international bandwidth connectivity except
by satellite transmission. In the past two years a spate of
activity has changed all this and a number of different
submarine cables have been laid, enhancing
the connectivity of the region and promising not only
cheaper capacity but faster and more improved connectivity.
Countries that will connect directly via the cable include
South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar,
Comoros, Mayote, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan.
A further 13 landlocked countries will be linked with the
system - Botswana, Burundi, the Central African Republic,
Chad, the DRC, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda,
Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Interconnection with
various other international undersea cable systems will
enable traffic on EASSy to seamlessly connect to Europe,
North and South America, the Middle East and Asia.
The cable layer ship Ile de Batz is one of three identical
ships in service with Alcatel-Lucent and will be laying the
cable northwards from Mtunzini into deep water. Once off
Mozambique a landing will be made at Maputo, and this is to be
followed by a landing in Toliara, Madagascar. From there the
ship sails to the Comores in the Mozambique Channel
for two landings and then on to a landing near Dar Es Salaam,
where it will connect with the northern section of cable which
is being laid by a second ship, Ile de Sein working south
from Sudan in the Red Sea.
The cable off Sudan in turn connects with existing cables
into southern Europe. The method on board the ship
involves coiling thousands of kilometers of cable in a vast
'drum' within the vessel from where it is spooled out into the
ocean as the ship holds a steady course. Splicing and
joining of cables is performed where necessary on board the
vessel using simple and sophisticated equipment and human
skill. What has changed is the inner section of cable used for
conveying signals and messages.
Today's cables use hollow fiber optics, each approximately
the thickness of a human hair, compared with thick inner
copper cable used in the early days. In 1858 Queen Victoria's
98-word message to US President James Buchanan took 16 hours
to transmit while the president's 149-word response took
ten hours! Thanks to the EASSy instant
communications will be made even faster and more efficient and
benefit everyone from business enterprises to private users.