The much anticipated East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) finally landed on the shores of East Africa two weeks ahead of schedule. The 10,000km submarine cable system currently being laid along the east coast of Africa is owned and operated by a group of African telecom operators (92 percent) and international  telecom operators (8 percent).

Interconnection with other undersea international cable systems will enable traffic on EASSy to seamlessly connect to Europe, North and South America, the Middle East and Asia, thereby enhancing the east coast of Africa’s connectivity to the global telecommunications network. It is expected that the success of EASSy will see telephone call rates and Internet prices reduce drastically. The cable will link Sudan to South Africa via Djibouti, Somalia, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mozambique.

The project, whose cost is US$235 is being financed by the African Development Bank (AfDB), European Investment Bank, Germany’s development bank KfW and the French development bank AFD. The West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC ) whose headquarters are in Nairobi is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) jointly owned by 12 major telecom operators in East, Central and Southern Africa – all first or second tier operators in their respective countries.

The telecom companies are Botswana Telecommunications Corporation, U-COM Burundi, Onatel Burundi, Djibouti Telecom, Telkom Kenya Orange and Lesotho Telecommunications Authority. Others are TDM – Mozambique, Gilat Satcom Nigeria Limited, Dalkom Somalia, Government of Seychelles, Zanzibar Telecom and Uganda Telecom.

The Cable landed in Fort Jesus, Mombasa, on 22 March  at a glittering ceremony attended by Kenya’s Information and Communications minister  Samuel Pogishio, International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretary General Dr Hamadoun Touré, WIOCC Managing Director Chris wood, Orange Kenya Deputy Managing Director Peter Reinartz and the CCK Director General Charles Njoroge. According to  Wood, 8000 km of the cable had been laid with only another 2000km to cover left.  He said EASSy had already landed in seven of the nine countries.

The EASSy Cable will provide up to 1.4 terabytes of bandwidth. Wood  further said testing would start at the end of April for two months and should therefore be operational between June and July.   Poghisio noted that despite witnessing the landing of both the TEAMS and SEACOM cables a few months  ago which were now operational, the stakeholders and public were yet to experience remarkable changes in the pricing of bandwidth as had been expected.

“As the government, we are hoping that when operational, EASSy will create a competitive environment where bandwidth prices will fall, so that service providers can eventually pass the benefits to the end users and consumers” said the minister.

Meanwhile, Orange Kenya has provided a co-location for both TEAMS and the EASSy servers at Telephone House in Mombasa.