Convergence Partners investee, Seacom, reports that, in 2012, it will upgrade its East African submarine cable and increase capacity to meet rising demand from the African continent.
In addition, Seacom will be expanding its core backhaul routes, such as the network between Johannesburg and Mtunzini, in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Marseilles to London cable.
SEACOM and MAIN One, the only two privately funded and open-access based African submarine fibre optic cable systems, were awarded “Best Pan African Initiative” at the AfricaCom Awards 2011 ceremony held in Cape Town, South Africa, last week. The award recognises an initiative taken by an organisation or a group of organisations to improve telecommunications services at a regional or continental level.
Main One Chief Executive Officer, Funke Opeke, explained: “Through this partnership, Main One and SEACOM have extended their individual cable systems to the opposite coasts of Africa without the efforts required to construct brand new routes.
Convergence Partners successfully participated as a sponsor and exhibitor at the 14th annual AfricaCom Conference, held in Cape Town on 9 and 10 November 2011. AfricaCom is the largest communications conference and exhibition on the Continent, gathering together more than 5,000 telecoms decision-makers. This is the second year that Convergence Partners has exhibited at the conference.
Exhibiting on the Convergence Partners’ stand was Comsol, FibreCo, Plessey and SEACOM with each of the companies presenting their offerings in the communications infrastructure space.
Convergence Partners’ investee companies FibreCo and Seacom have provided support to the South African SKA Team (working under the guidance of the National Research Foundation and the Department of Science & Technology) in its bid for South African to host the SKA. The SKA team prepared and submitted their final bid on 15 September 2011. Convergence Partners extends its congratulations to these parties on achieving this milestone and hopes for a successful outcome to this project of significant national importance for South Africa and indeed the whole Southern African region. A bid decision is expected to be taken at the end of the first quarter of 2012.
SEACOM, the pan-African ICT enabler, announced the appointment of Mark Simpson as its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with effect 5 September 2011. Brian Herlihy, the current CEO, will remain with the company as a member of the Board and take on the new role of Executive Director where he will focus on strategic projects essential for SEACOM’s continued success.
Seacom, a Convergence Partners investee company, has entered into a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Square Kilometre Array (SKA) South Africa to provide support for the country’s €1.5-billion SKA radio telescope project.
SKA South Africa site bid manager Dr. Bruce Wallace said in placing the SKA data transport capacity requirement in perspective, the SKA network is estimated to be 100 to 150 times larger than the current World Wide Web network.
Seacom, a Convergence Partners investee company, has invested R100 million in additional South African infrastructure to meet the continuous high growth in demand for broadband services and applications. The investment includes the purchase of physical optical fibre links from Dark Fibre Africa (DFA) as well as installing the equipment required for Seacom to manage the network linking KwaZulu Natal’s coast where the Seacom marine cable lands to two redundant Points of Presence (PoPs) in Gauteng.
Convergence Partners investee company, Seacom has signed a master services agreement with Telecomunicações de Moçambique (TDM), the leading telecommunications service provider in Mozambique, which gives it access to the largest and most distributed fibre optic network in Mozambique as well as a diverse route into Zimbabwe and additional border presence into Malawi and South Africa.
Seventeen years ago Wired published Neal Stephenson’s magisterial epic “Mother Earth Mother Board”, about the web of undersea fibre-optic cables being built to connect all of humanity. Well – almost all. Africa, again, was left behind. Until 2009, all of East Africa could only connect to the Internet over slow and hugely expensive satellite links.
Finally, two years ago, SEACOM, a Convergence Partners investee company, laid a cable along the East African coast to Mumbai; then tributaries were run thousands of kilometers inland, as far as Uganda and even Rwanda; and later this year, a direct connection to Europe will be lit up. A recent article in TechCruch explores some of the inner workings and history of the SEACOM undersea cable.
Less than two years after completing the undersea portion of the first system to connect Southern and Eastern Africa to the rest of the world via India and Europe, Convergence Partners’ investee company SEACOM continues to drive the growth of the African Internet by rolling-out an Internet Protocol, IP, Platform into its international core network.
The IP Platform project involves the design, deployment and operation of nine land-based Internet access points that will store popular web content closer to where the Internet is accessed, thereby enabling a richer and faster Internet browsing experience for end users. Six of these IP network nodes are already live including Dar es Salaam, Johannesburg, Maputo, Marseille, Mombasa and Mtunzini.
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