SEACOM (African cable system)
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Owners: 76.25 % African investors; 23.75 % Herakles Telecom |
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Landing points
see the landing points section
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| Design capacity | 4.2 Tbit/s |
| Currently lit capacity | 100 Gbit/s |
| Technology | Fiber optics |
| Date of first use | July 23, 2009 |
SEACOM is a submarine cable operator with a network of submarine and terrestrial high-speed fibre-optic cable that serves the East and West coasts of Africa. SEACOM’s reach extends into Europe and the Asia-Pacific via India. The Pan-African network uses bundled backhaul, open access PoP's (Points of Presence) and global partnerships to provide end-to-end wholesale and enterprise connectivity around the world for African and international network and content operators.
In-service since July 2009, SEACOM has increased the availability of international bandwidth ten-fold, and more so in many of Africa’s most under-served nations. The only privately funded and truly neutral carrier in its market, SEACOM also offers a comprehensive suite of IP/MPLS (Internet Protocol & Multi-Protocol Label Switching) and clear channel services to the wholesale and enterprise segments.
Express fibre pairs are provided from Kenya to France to a PoP in Marseille, as well as from Tanzania to India into a PoP in Mumbai.
SEACOM has also built an on-net, European network, managed and operated by themselves, to deliver a mixture of Transport and IP/MPLS services to/from Africa from/to the following cities in Europe:
Through partnership with 3rd party networks in Europe, SEACOM are able to deliver services to other locations in Europe not covered in the list of cities, above.
The SEACOM cable is deployed with a mixture of double armour cable, single armour cable, special protection cable (with a metallic wrap below the insulator, rather than steel wires), and lightweight cable without armour, used in deep waters. Shallower water cable typically has more protective armour than offshore, deeper cable.
The cable is a loose tube design that determines the amount and relative location along the transmission path of each type of fibre. Multiple fibre types are used in the cable: dispersion shifted and non-dispersion shifted.
The repeaters are optical amplifier repeaters, using erbium-doped amplifiers. There are over 150 repeaters in the SEACOM system. They are spaced along the cable many tens of kilometres apart with the distance between repeaters varying depending on the segment in the system. Repeater spacing is determined by a variety of factors, including the transmission capacity of the fibres in the cable and the distance between SLTE's (Submarine Line Terminal Equipment).
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Wikipedia