Control over SAT-3 cable system to be relaxed

IDG News Service reports that as of today, monopoly control over Africa's SAT-3 cable system will officially come to an end, amid fears that the network will run into capacity problems as early as 2009. The submarine fibre runs from South Africa to West Africa, and then links to cable systems extending to Europe and Asia. Since 2002, SAT-3 consortium members with landing points have had a monopoly on selling the cable bandwidth in their own countries, and to countries without landing points. As a result of this closed regime, the cost of telecoms in Africa has remained high, since few operators were able to buy capacity at cost. Consortium members included Telkom of South Africa, Camtel of Cameroon, Ghana Telecom, NITEL of Nigeria, Angola Telecom, Maroc Telecom and Namibia Telecom. African regulators, policy makers, non-governmental organisations and consumers have been pushing for SAT-3 to include more operators to make the market more competitive and bring down bandwidth costs.

The scramble for bandwidth that will occur among African countries following the end of the monopoly is raising fears that the cable will run out of capacity, although Telkom is playing down this fear. Its CEO, Reuben September, said cable utilisation is continually being monitored to avoid the occurrence of any capacity shortfall

Africa currently has a number of cable projects in the pipeline, including the East African Marine System (TEAMS) linking Kenya to the United Arab Emirates, the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) which is planned to run from South Africa to Sudan with landing points in six countries, and the InfraCO West Coast project which will link South Africa to Europe. All are meant to spur bandwidth competition and bring down the high cost of telecoms on the continent.