Seacom’s network expansion plans and growth strategy will parall
Seacom’s network expansion plans and growth strategy will parall
Convergence Partners investee, Seacom, reports that, in 2012, it will upgrade its East African submarine cable and increase capacity to meet rising demand from the African continent.
In addition, Seacom will be expanding its core backhaul routes, such as the network between Johannesburg and Mtunzini, in KwaZulu-Natal, and the Marseilles to London cable.
Seacom CEO Mark Simpson says the operator’s network expansion plans and growth strategy will parallel Africa’s increasing telecommunications demand.
“What has become clear is that we must continue to expand its reach and performance. In fact, participation with other cable systems on the East and West African coasts signals the evolution of the Seacom network,” he says.
The Seacom submarine fibre-optic network system was launched on July 23, 2009, and serves to directly connect South Africa and East Africa with Europe and Southern Asia, covering a distance of over 17 000 km.
In July, Seacom and US-based digital optical network equipment supplier Infinera Corp, successfully trialled five 100 Gb/s channels of coherent optical transmission over a distance of 1 732 km using Infinera’s phototonic integrated circuits.
Simpson confirmed that the Infinera technology enables seamless upgrades from existing 10 Gb/s networks without having to upgrade the underlying fibre infrastructure. This will provide Seacom’s land-based network in South Africa with a total capacity of over 8 Tb/s per fibre an effective tenfold increase on its current capacity. This is in line with Seacom’s plans to expand the marine portion of the cable to over 4.8 Tb/s.