Pirates disrupt SA broadband

seacom has delayed the launch of its undersea data cable by a month after its operations were disrupted by pirate activity.
deploying the cable in the gulf of aden off the somalian coast took longer than expected, seacom said.
while the deployment in this area has been completed, seacom still have to splice the cable section deployed from mumbai, india, to africa.
testing of the larger cable system will be finalised shortly thereafter.
the cable section from south africa to kenya, including all southern and east african landing stations, has already undergone successful testing.
the $650m, 15 000km-long undersea cabling has 1.2 terabits per second (tb/s) cable capacity that far outweighs telkom's current 30 gigabits per second (gb/s) capacity.
it will connect africa with international data networks in asia and europe.
"their (pirates') effect on the project timeline was only fully established recently and while i am personally truly disappointed by the delay, it was imperative that strong measures be put in place to guarantee the successful completion of the cable system and the safety of the ship and its crews," said seacom ceo brian herlihy.
telecoms analyst at africa analysis dobek pater said seacom has a valid excuse.
"a month's delay is not tragic in the greater scheme of things, and so far everything else seems to be going well," he said. "the problem is well managed, and we hope that after a month it'll be ready for service."
the new available bandwidth is set to remove sa's international bandwidth duopoly controlled by telkom and neotel. it will increase competition, improve the quality of broadband and drive market prices lower.