The cable has landed

Crews in rubber dinghies lead the optic fibre cable from the ship, Ille-de-Batz, at Mtunzini beach

Teamwork - hauling in the precious cable

The 10 000km long undersea EASSy communications cable was finally landed at Mtunzini last week after weather conditions caused a delay. The East African Submarine Cable System currently being linked along the east African coastline, is scheduled to be ready for commercial service from August. The cable-laying ship, Ille-de-Batz, parked offshore from the Mtunzini beach last Sunday and during the week ploughed the trench in which the cable will be buried 1km below the seabed for the first few kilometres out to sea.‘This has a minimal impact on the environment, which will soon recover,’ assured Mtunzini Operations Specialist, André Smuts. In all, there are nine EASSy landing stations - in Sudan, Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar, Mozambique and South Africa, with shore-end landings already having occurred in Mozambique and Sudan. Interconnection with various 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 into the global telecommunications network. Containing four hollow optic fibres, each the width of a human hair, the cable will be able to handle 16 million phone calls simultaneously at a rate of 10 gigabytes per second. Telkom’s Managing Executive for Wholesale Services, Alphonzo Samuels, explained that submarine cables hold many benefits. These include superior transmission quality, less delays compared to satellite, high transmission capacity, access to the global optical fibre network, lower unit costs (compared to satellite), no electromagnetic interference and higher resistance against adverse weather conditions.