Seacom unveils platform for faster Internet, as it diversifies

BY STANDARD CORRESPONDENT

Seacom has unveiled a plan to provide richer and faster Internet access in Africa through its newly launched Internet Protocol platform.

This comes two years after Seacom introduced the undersea fiber cable, which connects and gives broadband Internet access to South and East African countries.

The firm says it will design, deploy and operate nine land-based Internet access points that will store web content closer to where the Internet is accessed, thereby enabling a richer and faster internet browsing experience for end-users.

Six of these IP network nodes are already up and running, including those in Mombasa, Dar-es-Salaam, Johannesburg, Maputo, Marseille, and Mtunzini.

Seacom has covered about 17,000 kilometres, stretching along the Eastern and African coastlines and onwards to India and Europe.

The IP platform will also hasten Internet connection by allowing customers to reach multiple countries using the shortest path to final destination, without transferring traffic to Europe, as is currently the case. And this direct routing, combined with increased resilience through Seacoms networks, which will reduce the exposure to data losses in the event of outages elsewhere on the network.

And the portal will also increase the quantity of content generated within Africa.

Mobile penetration

"Today, the majority of Internet content consumed in Africa is non-African, flowing from Europe and North America into Africa. We believe that the growth of the African ICT market, including mobile penetration and the eager adoption of social networking, coupled with the development of cloud services will result in a rapid increase in content on African soil," Seacom’s Regional Head Julius Opio said.

"In the near future, the rest of the world will be viewing media generated in and stored on, the African continent and Seacom will remain at the forefront of developing the African Internet to support this trend," he added.

Seacom is a privately financed, developed and owned submarine fibre optic cable network that landed on the Kenyan coast in July 2009.