{"id":33577,"date":"2013-03-14T00:48:31","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T22:48:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=33577"},"modified":"2013-03-14T10:02:50","modified_gmt":"2013-03-14T08:02:50","slug":"race-on-to-build-new-sa-subsea-cable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/33577\/race-on-to-build-new-sa-subsea-cable\/","title":{"rendered":"Race on to build new SA subsea cable"},"content":{"rendered":"

The race is on to build an undersea cable from Mtunzini to Cape Town after operator Seacom<\/a> said it was \u201cfairly well progressed\u201d.<\/p>\n

Last month, telecoms infrastructure provider Techteledata<\/a> said that it is also in discussions to build a cable from Mtunzini to Cape Town, adding that it would also connect East London and Port Elizabeth in the process.<\/p>\n

Musa Phungula<\/a>, Techteledata managing director and founder, said that the cable system will provide redundancy between the cable systems which land on South Africa\u2019s East Coast (SEACOM, EASSy<\/a> and SAFE<\/a>) and the West Coast (WACS<\/a> and SAT-3).<\/p>\n

In an interview with BusinessTech, Seacom CEO, Mark Simpson<\/a> said: \u201cOne of the things we\u2019ve also been looking at it whether we do a build around Cape Town to Umtunzini. We are fairly well progressed,\u201d he said of the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would rather just get on and get it built rather than make announcements,\u201d the chief exec said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are working with a number of key partners, and investors. It\u2019s not a go yet, but the build is relatively straight forward,\u201d he said of the project.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe economics are relatively good, it\u2019s just about getting it funded,\u201d Simpson continued. The company lead said that East London and Port Elizabeth might also become attractive landing points, but that would depend on terrestrial builds in those territories.<\/p>\n

He said the project would add value to a number of current builds, with a host of carriers both locally, and internationally, likely to be interested.<\/p>\n

Last month, Techteledata said it has a technology partner lined up, but would not divulge the name.<\/p>\n

Phungula explained that his company also planned to build two 6,000 square meter data centres at Mtunzini and Yzerfontein.<\/p>\n

He said that many large telecoms players have already shown an interest in the new project, and are keen to purchase capacity on the cable system and in the data centres.
\nThe company lead said that Techteledata and the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) as well as the IDC<\/a> were in talks for funding for the project.<\/p>\n

The Development Bank distanced itself from the news and told BusinessTech that it could not comment on confidential discussions between it and its clients.<\/p>\n

The IDC said it had provided Techteledata with a letter of interest indicating a conditional funding commitment or an indication of appetite to fund based on off takes on the company meeting several conditions such as securing of an operating partner, securing of equity, IDC due diligence, and credit committee approval.<\/p>\n

Techteledata is planning to launch this project in July 2013.<\/p>\n

The company said that the total project budget is $100 million (R893 million), adding that they welcome potential investors to join the project.<\/p>\n

Phungula noted that he has previously worked as Solution Architect: Product Strategy & Business Development at Seacom.<\/p>\n

Seacom however, told BusinessTech that it would not comment on whether or not this \u201cparticular person\u201d was a former employee.<\/p>\n

More Seacom and\u00a0Techteledata<\/h3>\n

R893m subsea cable for SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

eFive Telecoms signs up undersea cable supplier<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

No funding for SAex cable yet<\/strong><\/a><\/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>\n

SAex cable finance discussions \u2018well advanced\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The race is on to build an undersea cable from Mtunzini to Cape Town after operator Seacom said it was \u201cfairly well progressed\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":33583,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,3027,5166,39,325,5167],"class_list":["post-33577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-mark-simpson","tag-musa-phungula","tag-seacom","tag-subsea-cable","tag-techteledata"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33577"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33581,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33577\/revisions\/33581"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}