East African Subsea Cable Crisis - Capacity Shortage

The East Africa capacity shortage is real and chronic. A cable serving the East Coast recently upgraded its network, but sold almost everything before the upgrade was complete. The 100G prices along the coast vary from $35K to $110K per month depending on end points. Not exacly cheap. Peace is not helping ease the crunch as the Chinese carriers are not providing leases into Kenya, but instead offering just IRUs. This eliminates most of the market as the capital required is simply too great for most players except PTTs, OTTs, and mobile carriers. The 2Africa cable is simply insufficient as Facebook kept 4 fibre pairs for itself leaving only 12 pairs for carriers' internal traffic and wholesale sales. The only other significant cables serving the Coastd are Eassy and Seacom. Neither is really high capacity by today's standards. Furthermore, 2Africa's Marseille/Mombasa segment may not be ready until 2026 given Red Sea hostilities. So regional ISPs have little choice but to haul traffic to South Africa.

It is highly like a new cable will be announced to serve East Africa probably using 2Africa's cable landing stations and the same business model. It might happen as early as autumn of 2025. 

One 100G Wave IRU Available on a 10 year term: Mombasa/Marseille. Upfront payment is $2.5 million.

Map of East African Subsea Capacity



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