Seacom investing in land network

Seacom says it is investing R100 million in its own terrestrial cable link between Gauteng and Kwazulu-Natal.

"This is one of the many investments that we are making...as we continue to build the African Internet based on low-latency, high speed and reliable infrastructure," Seacom CEO Brian Herlihy said in a statement.

For the last few years, the company had relied on a land-based partnership with Neotel to use its fibre-optic network.

The money would be used to buy optical fibre links as well as equipment to manage its own network from a marine cable in Kwazulu-Natal to two points in Gauteng.

The route would be operated in parallel with existing routes to increase reliability of services.

Initially, 100 gigabits per second on one wavelength of the fibre would be lit. A further 20 waves were expected to be lit within the next year, giving the link a total capacity of over 8 terabits per second.

The new route was being created to meet the increased demand of broadband by content rich applications like cloud computing, HD video streaming and Internet Protocol Television.

An optical fibre, made of very pure glass, works by transmitting light between two ends. Fibres permit transmission over longer distances and at higher data rates than metal wires, and are immune to electromagnetic interference.

The privately funded Seacom is 17,000 kilometres long and connects South Africa, East Africa, South Asia and Europe with a fibre optic cable. It started operating in July 2009.