[AfrICANN-discuss] WASACE: A new cable project that bundles together all of Africa’s fibre dreams

[Anne-Rachel Inné]

 WASACE: A new cable project that bundles together all of Africa’s fibre
dreams

http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/en/issue-no-582/top-story/wasace-a-new-cable-p/en

There’s a rather cruel definition that does the rounds amongst those who
watch these things: what’s an international fibre project? A person with a
power-point presentation who goes to conferences. This week sees the launch
of an extremely ambitious project to connect Africa, South America, North
America and Europe: WASACE. Russell Southwood looks at its prospects and
how it might fit into the connectivity landscape.

Africa has gone from having hardly any cables in 2000 to having no less
than 9 cables that will now connect almost all African countries by 2012.
Eritrea’s the exception but they’ve always been the exception.

However, despite the arrival of terabytes worth of capacity, there still
exists “below-the-radar” a small but significant number of projects to
build more international capacity to and from Africa. Interestingly the
WASACE map of routes consolidates several of these dreams into a single
project.

The key part of the project is a link to the USA via Brazil, which offers
an alternative routing to North America that does not need to travel via
Europe and the North Atlantic.  The idea is that south-south trade is
increasing and one pole of that is the growth of trade between Brazil and
Angola. Indeed, WASACE’s launch motto is – “WASACE: Because the world is
changing”.

Other more long-term aspirations expressed in the map above include three
continent-crossing terrestrial routes linking east and west coast
countries: the Algeria-Nigeria link (at least three projects have had a run
at that one); Tanzania to Congo-B via DRC (no takers for that one
previously); and Djibouti via Sudan and Chad to Nigeria (something France
Telecom talks wistfully about).

WASACE claims to be the first trans-Atlantic system to deploy the
next-generation “100G” technology, with ten times the capacity of previous
systems. Its promoters say that it will represent a total investment of
billions of US dollars from investors on four continents (which must be
USA, Brazil, Africa and Europe), including the international private equity
investment firm VIP Must, represented by CEO Patrick Perrin, and the
African Development Bank, represented by COO Raymond Zoupko, as well as
Brazilian and other investors. VIP Must was established to invest in major
global development projects. Angola has enough money to have talked of
putting up its own satellite so why not a fibre link?

The project is headed by WASACE Cable Company Worldwide Holding a
multinational development company represented by CEO Ramon Gil-Roldan of
Spain. Project development will be managed by the David Ross Group,
represented by CEO David Ross of the USA. Ross is a well-respected
consultant and project manager who has had experience working on the
continent before.

The key initial route connecting Brazil and Africa would have to rely on
three different types of traffic: 1) direct traffic based on trade between
Angola and Brazil; 2) Latin American carriers seeking a new route to the
Far East; and 3) those wanting redundancy for blockages on other
international routes. Does all this traffic add up to a business case?
Probably not in the short to medium term but maybe, just maybe if you take
a very optimistic long-term view. But all of those things will only work if
those participating in the cable offer North Atlantic level prices. This
means a major shift in attitudes from some of the coastal monopoly telcos
that still remain in “high price, low volume” model, most notably Angola
Telecom.
In the meantime, a bigger set of issues remains to be addressed. The cheap
wholesale prices are at the landing station but in most places they have
yet to be passed on to the end user, whether a consumer or a corporate.
Bandwidth is over-priced on national fibre networks and local access is
still nowhere near as prevalent as it should be. Mobile operators and ISPs
are still hunting the corporate customers in great numbers but have yet to
really engage with the idea of “at home” broadband Internet consumers.
There’s a thirst for online content but not always enough bandwidth to
access it. Operators are still acting as if bandwidth is in short supply.
Once the back of these problems has been broken perhaps a rosier view can
be taken of international fibre prospects beyond the existing terabytes…
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