Reliance
Corporation, one of India’s largest information technology
firms, says that it will construct a submarine cable along
the eastern Africa seaboard by 2009.
The
fibre optic cable, the company said recently, will link
South Africa and Kenya, and also serve Tanzania, Mauritius,
Mozambique and Madagascar as well as some land-locked
countries. The cable link will be laid down by Reliance
subsidiary, Flag Telecom
Last
December, Reliance announced that it would invest $1.5
billion to put up the world s most extensive Internet
access network through submarine cables covering more
than 60 countries.
News
of the latest plans to lay a cable along the eastern seaboard
are likely to cause a certain level of alarm among the
partner states involved with the controversy-prone East
African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) cable. By last
December, only 12 countries out of the targeted 23 stretching
from South Africa to the Sudan had pledged support to
the project.
Proponents
of an eastern seaboard fibre optic cable say that it would
lower Internet slashing bandwidth costs by as much as
a third, and spur the development of outsourcing centres
along the eastern coast to compete with similar centres
in Asia.
Valued
at $300 million, EASSy itself is planned to run from Mtunzini
in South Africa to Port Sudan in Sudan, with landing points
in six countries, and connected to at least five landlocked
countries. The thinking is that these countries will subsequently
no longer have to rely on expensive satellite systems
to carry voice and data services. The project, to be funded
largely by the World Bank and the Development Bank of
Southern Africa, was initiated on January 2003.
Since
inception, however, the EASSy project which is now expected
to be completed by the end of 2008 has been dogged by
disagreements over financing and access among partner
states, with Kenya opting to sit the project out. Kenyan
officials were reportedly particularly peeved by South
African efforts to control the project, reports indicated.
Last
September, Kenya announced that it would seek funding
to finance its own undersea cable running from Mombasa
to Fujairah in the Gulf of Oman in a bid to accelerate
the emergence of the country a business outsourcing centre.
The cable, Nairobi said, would be made available to any
interested party along the way.
Analysts
say that the announcement by Reliance, by introducing
a third player, could change the dynamics somewhat, raising
the possibility that the Kenyan government may seek a
partnership with the Indian multinational to counter-balance
the South African-led EASSy.
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