It’s called the last link. The roughly 5,000 miles of coastline between Djibouti and South Africa is the longest stretch of land untouched by submarine fiber-optic cable. That means the sub-Saharan African countries bordering the Indian Ocean, which include some of the continent’s most prosperous and stable nations, rely on satellite for the bulk of their Internet connections. Satellite is not only slower than fiber, it’s more expensive. Paying more for Internet access than just about anywhere else in the world doesn’t help the region’s struggling economies.
To solve this problem, a consortium of some 20 state-run telecoms and private businesses including MTN Uganda and Telkom South Africa says it will start laying submarine cable to serve Africa’s east coast as early as 2006. In theory, around 250 million people should have access to cheaper and faster Internet connections by 2007. It sounds like a good plan. But the East African Submarine System (EASSy) will have to avoid the mistakes of a similar submarine cable on Africa’s west coast that has done little to improve Internet access from Senegal to South Africa.
Known as Sat-3, the submarine cable linking Europe to Africa’s west coast opened in 2002. However, local Internet service providers in the nine African countries served by the cable have very limited access to the system because the companies that built Sat-3 have exclusive rights until 2007. John Sihra, EASSy’s project coordinator, said that “not inhibiting access for other entities is enshrined in the consortium’s constitution.” Mr. Sihra says the $200-million project will bring a reasonable rate of return to its partners, but links to the new cable will not be hoarded by the incumbents. “We are very conscious of what we read and what we hear about Sat-3,” says Mr. Sihra.
What he knows about West Africa’s sole submarine fiber-optic cable has no doubt been critical. Sat-3 has attracted a great deal of controversy. In October, South Africa’s communications regulator called on the Sat-3 consortium, which includes South Africa’s Tekom and Nigeria’s Nitel, to lower rates to help bring broadband to sub-Saharan Africa. It’s not likely to happen. The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa says that international accords supported by the African Union prevent consortium members, which include Nigeria’s Nitel and South Africa’s Telkom, from meddling with prices. It’s a Gordian knot of rules and regulations involving 36 members and nine countries that is prompting others to take matters into their own hands.
Sat-3’s shortcomings have left West Africa with some of the world’s most expensive Internet access, says Alan Mauldin, an analyst with TeleGeography, a Washington, D.C.-based company that monitors the global fiber-optic market. “Sometimes it isn’t enough to have submarine cable. It has to be done the right way,” says Mr. Mauldin.
Not doing it the right way costs African businesses millions of dollars a year as they suffer with expensive, slow Internet access. Some experts claim that bandwidth prices in Africa can be as much as 25 times greater than equivalent service in Europe.
While EASSy seeks not to repeat Sat-3’s mistakes on Africa’s east coast, a company called Infinity Worldwide Communications in New York City has announced plans to build a 3,500-mile fiber-optic cable from Portugal to nine West African countries. “We are going to be a totally open system, and we are going to sell on an open basis to all ISPs,” says Bob Woog, chief operating officer at Infinity Worldwide Communications. Mr. Woog says the project will cost around $500 million. The company is in the early stages of raising money, he says.
Mr. Woog’s plans go beyond bringing fiber-optic to eight countries between Europe and Cameroon. The company aims to create an intranet linking the West African countries to each other. “It costs more to call Ghana from Nigeria than it costs to call the United States from Nigeria,” says Mr. Woog. Phone calls and Internet access in Africa are expensive. Consider the prices Nigerians pay for an hour of time at an Internet café: While the average price is around $0.70 per hour, an Internet hour can run to as much as $3.60 in remote locations where competition is scarce. This is in a country with a per capita GDP of $1,000 and where 60 percent of the population lives below the poverty line.
Expensive access is part of the reason Internet penetration in sub-Saharan Africa is so dismal. The International Telecommunication Union pegs the number of Internet users in all of Africa at a paltry 2 percent in 2005 vs. 9 percent in Asia. More submarine fiber-optic cables serving the continent will change things.