Following the completion of the construction of EASSy in April 2010, the system owners have carried out a number of tests to ensure that the system meets the highest international standards. “We are confident that this is the most reliable system serving the African continent,” said Jacques van der Walt, chairman of the Procurement Group responsible for technical aspects of EASSy.

 

More than 25 telecommunications operators mainly from Africa, along with a number of global operators who invested in EASSy, have commenced customer service on the cable.

 

EASSy was constructed under a turnkey contract by Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN). The system uses state of the art technology capable of delivering 3.84 Terabits per second, making EASSy the largest capacity submarine cable system serving Africa.

 

With ten landing points in Mtunzini, Maputo, Toliary, Moroni, Dar es Salaam, Mombasa, Mogadishu, Djibouti city, Berbera, and Port Sudan, EASSy provides the most extensive reach on the East African coast and provides onwards global connectivity through multiple interconnect points.

 

EASSy chairman, Trevor Martins, stated that “the system was delivered on time, under budget, with a much higher design capacity, whilst achieving exceptional collaboration amongst African operators. The EASSy system offers customers the most resilient and lowest latency technical solution for services from Africa to Europe and beyond. Furthermore, the EASSy owners’ funding structure ensures the most sustainable and financially secure submarine cable business model.”

 

“The presence of multiple investors and participants in EASSy ensures open competition resulting in benefits to the market as a whole as can be seen in South Africa, by the participation of operator investors being MTN, Neotel, Telkom and Vodacom”, stated Prince Radebe, Telkom SA EASSy representative.

 

The system’s abundant broadband capacity will be available for the use of numerous countries in Africa over the next 25 years. 

 

“This plentiful and high quality capacity will deliver significant commercial and developmental benefits to end users, operators and governments in Africa. EASSy delivery at this time introduces a significant competitive element in the broadband capacity market in the region that will additionally ensure affordable rates to end users,” said Samson Matibini, the EASSy Financial & Administration Subcommittee Chairperson.

 

It is currently unclear exactly how the commercial launch of EASSy will affect South African mobile and fixed line broadband users.