Fibre: Questions need answering

Current Status and Issues in Africa’s Quest for Fibre

There is rising expectation that the most marine fibre-starved part of the world could get hooked onto the international fibre system in the near future. But as efforts to install this fibre gather steam, issues for discussion continue to emerge and some are important for the success of the ventures now on the drawing board.

The unilateral ventures some states are undertaking, continuing disagreements between telecom operators and their governments who are backing the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) to be the vanguard for the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy), the race among different cables to open shop on the same frontier – which could render some of them unviable – as well as the likely demise of public good principles in access to bandwidth these cables would deliver, all need continuous discussion.

This paper, written by CIPESA and the Association for Progressive Communications (APC’s) Fibre for Africa initiative, lays out the current state of marine programmes planned for the region, as well as some of the issues that need continuing debate as the region seeks to secure affordable fibre.

The Planned Cables

1) EASSy (The East African Submarine Cable System): This is an initiative of various telecom companies in eastern and southern Africa, but some governments have been working through the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) attempting to supervise its construction and management. The 9,900 km cable would run from South Africa up to Sudan.

2) Teams (The East African Marine System): Teams will be owned by the Kenya Government (up to 40%), while Etilsat of the United Arab Emirates will hold a 20% stake. Private investors - yet to be secured - will hold 40%. The cable will run from Fujairah in the UAE to Mombasa, Kenya.

3) The Kenya Data Network-Reliance cable: In mid 2006, KDN announced it had clinched a deal with India’s Flag Telecom to construct a $115 million link between Yemen and Mombasa - and later stretch to South Africa. Flag Telecom owns and manages an extensive optic fibre network spanning Asia, Europe, the Middle East and USA, and hoped then to connect Mombasa by September 2007 to a network it is erecting in the Gulf region.

4) The SEACOM marine cable system: The planned 13,000 km undersea fiber optic network will provide connectivity between South Africa, Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, India and Europe. Owned by the American Heracles Telecom, SAECOM’s planned commissioning date is the first quarter of 2009. The SEACOM cable System is being designed with a nominal capacity of 1,280 Gb/s comprised of two fibre pairs expected to connect South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania and Kenya to India and Europe (with an option for UAE).

Contentious Issues

A. NEPAD and South Africa’s roles: Many of the key entities which NEPAD would hope to interest in investing in the NEPAD Broadband Infrastructure Network (NBIN) are the movers behind EASSy which currently appears to be on a roller-coaster ride to actualisation. This raises some questions:

• What role will NEPAD play, and will the NBIN actually get to build any fibre infrastructure?
•SA government officials have suggested they could lead a rival cable-building project because of the EASSy consortium’s intransigence. But how easy would it be convince other governments to join a cable project parallel to EASSy, given that only 12 of the 23 countries that originally embraced EASSy have so far signed the NBIC protocol, while only Rwanda has ratified it?
•Will SA manage to get its local companies participating in EASSy to run the cable on Open Access principles?

B. Open Access: any regional government, civil society organisations and even some companies are keen to see regional fibre run on Open Access principles.

• How come none of the cables is mentioning how they will seek to ensure a level playing field in the countries concerned?
• And who will develop the backhaul terrestrial infrastructure?
• If fibre gets built to Mombasa, through private cables like Teams or Reliance, what will be the implication for landlocked countries like Zambia?

Anders Comstedt, a former CEO of a European fibre infrastructure company that sold to anyone on equal conditions say the major issues currently seems to be landing rights and termination of international connectivity/traffic as seen from the side of the respective cable projects, and access to the landing station and the international connectivity from all operators in any country on non-discrimination conditions, as this point may be controlled by a local dominant player.

C. Would all these cables be needed? Some argue that Africa is still a small market that will not support multiple cables in the near future.

• Will all the four planned cables materalise and become commercially viable?
• Will the early bird not swallow the entire worm, and grow a monopolist’s powers?
• Shall we not be duplicating resources, particularly for a poor continen if we go ahead with building multiple cables?

Teams promoters say their model is drastically different from SEACOM in the sense that Teams is “a means to an end” as its cost to the consumer will depend on what competitors, that is, India and the Philippines charge their consumers. If they charge $200 per MB, that is what Teams shall charge its customers – and still hopes to have a good return on investment. It plans to plan to connect directly into Italy or India.

• Will governments in the region allow SEACOM to build landing stations on their territory?

• Would ventures like KDN’s and SEACOM charge landlocked countries like Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda huge amounts of money to hook onto their systems that are built outside of the EASSy (multinational) arrangement?