EASSy submarine cable system prepares for launch in July

The East Africa Submarine System (EaSSy) was completed earlier this week and is planned to go live in July, according to the consortium’s major investor West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC). The cable system is the second high-capacity fibre optic cable skirting Africa’s east coast after SEACOM, and runs from South Africa to Sudan and onwards to Europe via the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. The 10,000 kilometre cable also has landing points in Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros, Madagascar and Mozambique.

In addition to the WIOCC which owns 29 per cent of EASSy, the other members in the consortium are Bharti Airtel, Botswana Telecom, British Telecom, Comores Telecom, Etisalat, France Telecom, Mauritius Telecom, MTN International Group, Neotel, Saudi Telecom Company, Sudatel, TTCL (Tanzania), Telkom/Vodacom, Telma (Madagascar) and Zambia Telecom.

In a related project, EASSy signatories are building terrestrial fibre backhauls to link the land-locked countries of the region to the cable – Ethiopia, Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Swaziland and Lesotho.