South Atlantic Express (SAex),\u00a0the planned $320-million submarine cable connecting South Africa and Brazil, has not yet\u00a0received financial backing, eFive, the company behind the project has said.<\/p>\n
Lawrence Mulaudzi, the MD of eFive, said in April 2011 that a worst-case date for the cable\u2019s commissioning would be June 2013, with a best-case date for the first quarter of that year.<\/p>\n
However,\u00a0Rosalind Thomas, who was appointed CEO at eFive Telecoms in January, said: “The project is not going to be ready in 2013 due to delays experienced last year. Our target date is Q4 2014.”<\/p>\n
On the group’s financial backing for the cable, the chief executive said: “We are not there yet! But we hope soon to make progress on that front.”<\/p>\n
Thomas told BusinessTech in January: \u201cI am pleased to advise that the vendor selection process is close to being finalised and finance discussions are well advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n
If this cable system becomes a reality it will be the fifth major submarine cable system to go live in South Africa after SAT-3\/SAFE, SEACOM, EASSy and WACS.<\/p>\n
A number of market experts have questioned the ability to fund the cable, and its operational time-frame. Moreover, some have also\u00a0questioned the business case for a fifth international cable system as the existing systems have abundant unused capacity available for future use.<\/p>\n
If it were to go-ahead, the initial design capacity of the cable would be 12.8 TBit\/s and would be over 10,000 kilometres in length. It would consist of four fibre pairs, each capable of carrying 3,2TBit\/s of data using 40GBit\/s wavelength technology.<\/p>\n
Two fibre pairs \u2014 with a combined design capacity of 6,4TBit\/s \u2014 would be extended to South Africa from an undersea branching unit, with another two fibre pairs likely to be extended to Angola.<\/p>\n
The group said it was in discussions with\u00a0Neotel<\/a>,\u00a0FibreCo<\/a>, a partnership between\u00a0Cell C<\/a>,\u00a0Internet Solutions<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Convergence Partners<\/a>\u00a0to access fibre.<\/p>\n According to eFive, a memorandum of understanding closed in April 2010, Main One and\u00a0SEACOM<\/a>\u00a0would interconnect their cables with SAex and so form a pan-African fibre-optic ring. Through SEACOM the cable could also supply India with bandwidth towards the Americas.<\/p>\n eFive: SAex cable plans on track<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n No new sub-sea cable needed for a decade: Telkom<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n WACS: the last financially feasible undersea cable for SA?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\nRelated articles<\/strong><\/h3>\n