Six submarine cable projects not watertight, says BMI-T
August 13, 2008
By Thabiso Mochiko
Of the 10 submarine cables that were either planned or under construction in Africa, only four would be likely to work, BMI-TechKnowledge (BMI-T) said yesterday.
This was because 10 cables would create a significant capacity glut in some regions, despite the rapid growth in demand that could be expected, said Brian Neilson, the research director at BMI-T.
"This excess means that the business cases for some of the cables are not watertight and BMI-T expects some consolidation to take place among the cable projects" said Neilson. "Some could even fall by the wayside."
BMI-T said privately owned consortiums Seacom, Eassy and Teams, and the government-led Infraco were likely to succeed.
It said the cables planned for southern and eastern Africa provided total design capacity of 10 terabits a second. BMI-T forecasts that demand in the region would be less than 120 gigabytes a second by 2012.
This indicates that there could be enough capacity to be handled by fewer companies.
If all 10 cables were to be constructed, more than $6 billion (R47 billion) would be spent over the next three years.
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