Introduction
As of October 2010, three new African submarine cables became active and fully functioning: MaIN OnE, EASSy and LION. These are in addition to cables that are already functioning: SAT3/SAFE, TEAMs and Seacom. This study is a continuation of already documented case studies of African internet and African submarine cable systems.
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- MaIN OnE (phase 1) - going from North to South
- Casablanca, Morocco
- Altavista, Canary Islands
- Dakar, Senegal
- Abijan, Côte d'Ivoire
- Accra, Ghana
- Lagos, Nigeria
- EASSy - going from North to South
- Port Sudan, Sudan
- Djibouti
- Mogadishu, Somalia
- Mombasa, Kenya
- Moroni, Comoros
- Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
- Toliara, Madagascar
- Maputo, Mozambique
- Mtunzini, South Africa
- LION - going from West to East
- Tamatave, Madagascar
- St. Paul, Reunion
- Baie du Jacobet, Mauritius
Effect of new sub-Saharan African cable systems coming online
To show the effects of these three new cables coming online, we shall consider minimum RTTs and jitter. We should see a considerable decrease in the minimum RTT and jitter for hosts that have direct connection with active submarine cables.
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The host at webmail.izi.re doesn't show any appreciable difference in minimum RTT since the LION cable system became active. We do not have data as far back as March but minimum RTT readings during January, February and March were 364ms, 372ms and 390ms confirm this observation. The graph also shows that this trend continued. We observed 365ms, 364ms and 355ms of RTTs during the months of April, May and October.
Non Fibre Optic solutions
The Google-backed O3b (other 3 billion) venture has raised $1.2bn from a group of investors and banks, and says these new funds will last until the satellite launch in 2013. Its stated aim is to bring broadband coverage to much of the globe, potentially serving the 3bn - almost half the world's population - that currently lacks high speed access. Its satellites should cover all regions within 45 degrees of latitude north and south of the equator, which would include "emerging and insufficiently connected markets in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Australia."
Its first eight satellites will be launched by Arianespace from French Guyana in 2013, though this is will be almost three years later than originally claimed by founder Greg Wyler, who said in 2008 that the system would be running by the end of 2010. When the satellites do get running, they will reach 70% of the population by orbiting four times closer to earth than usual geostationary birds, which should also reduce latency. More details
Intra-Africa (inland Africa) fibre optics
The main purpose of the inland Africa fibre optics network is to connect up rest of the sites and countries to landing points of African submarine cable systems. This will extend coverage from landing points to capitals and major cities. Most universities and institutes will be able to take advantage of this and collaborate in various international projects.
The interactive map displays currently functional (as of October 2010) and ongoing/scheduled fibre optic deployments.
Indicators of Internet penetration in Africa
PingER metrics
One can get an idea of how far behind Africa is compared to the rest of the world by comparing the PingER Internet throughputs, losses and Mean Opinion Scores (MOS).
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