SEACOM GOES LIVE

President Jakaya Kikwete officially switches on the much-anticipated cable in Dar es Salaam today.

The cable - which is 17,000km long - took two years to lay and cost more than $650m.It’s the first of the three cables expected to land in East Africa.

The switch will take place simultaneously in the Kenyan port city of Mombasa, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Maputo in Mozambique and Mtunzini in South Africa. The switchover from relying mainly on satellites to the submarine cable is expected to massively increase connection speeds.

SEACOM today announced that its 1,28 Terabytes per second (Tb/s), 17,000 kilometres, submarine fibre optic cable system linking south and east Africa to global networks via India and Europe has been completed and commissioned. Backhauls linking Johannesburg, Nairobi and Kampala with the coastal landing stations have been established and SEACOM is also working with its national partners to commission the final links to Kigali and Addis Ababa shortly.