Comments on: France Telecom to build new Africa cable

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:35:16 +0000

@Molefe I think it’ll be fine for a while – remember that the current fibers can push more bandwidth as the technology improves. Remember the SAT-3 cable is almost 10 years old, and can still handle the entire country’s bandwidth requirements if need be. New technology allowed the cable to push more banwdith, and this will hold true for all the cables we’re putting in place.

The SKA apparently needs 100gbit of bandwidth – that’s less than 1% of the bandwidth we’ll have available. Scary, actually!

By: Molefe

Molefe — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 07:13:23 +0000

I ve got a feeling the current capacity of fibre being rolled out around the African continent will not be enough to sustain demand in a few years time. just a gut feel whenever I hear the notion that there is excess capacity. Somehow excess of technology capacity seems to find good use. What if SA wins the bid to host the SKA. this capacity may become mickey mouse stuff. Who knows?

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 12:25:28 +0000

I love the quote: “The amount of fibre being deployed in Africa is bananas”. I say it’ll keep the continent regular

By: justinspratt

justinspratt — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:50:25 +0000

well said @stevesong. couldnt agree more.

By: Steve Song

Steve Song — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 06:11:41 +0000

I might have guessed you wouldn’t be able to leave that line alone. For those readers not familiar with the broadband industry, “bananas” is a technical term related to Quality of Service. It means very good.

I think there may be some industry casualties in the undersea fibre stakes but one thing is clear, the big winner is going to be Africa.

And within Africa, the big winners are going to be governments that get behind broadband.

South Africa is the classic case of the Hare and the Tortoise, except we’re not sleeping, we’re just too busy fighting amongst ourselves. We need one influential leader in government to stand up and take ownership of this issue.