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Seacom looks to buy last-mile fibre assets

Admire Moyo
By Admire Moyo, ITWeb's news editor.
Johannesburg, 01 Jun 2017
Suveer Ramdhani, Seacom's chief development officer.
Suveer Ramdhani, Seacom's chief development officer.

Pan-African telecom operator Seacom is looking to invest in last-mile fibre assets that access significant populations of end-users.

So says Suveer Ramdhani, Seacom's chief development officer, in an interview with ITWeb. He believes the telecoms industry in South Africa and the rest of the continent is on the cusp of a fibre and mobile broadband boom, as network operators scramble to meet the demand for video, cloud applications and mobile solutions among consumers and businesses.

"We are looking to expand regionally by acquiring companies that have made progress in this field and that may benefit from being part of a big family."

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.

Its reach extends into Europe and the Asia-Pacific via India. The Pan-African network uses bundled backhaul, open access 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.

Ramdhani says Seacom has expanded Seacom Business into South Africa and Kenya, and Seacom Wholesale Services into Botswana and Rwanda. "Our planning teams are now targeting underserviced areas with no access to fibre for investment. There are a number of business parks and buildings that have been reticulated with fibre and that now have direct access to the Seacom Global Network."

On the African continent, he says opportunities vary country by country. "In some countries such as Kenya, where fibre deployment has been on the leading edge, we see an opportunity to offer more stable, higher quality services; in countries such as Mozambique, that have had no access to fibre, fibre deployment in itself is a technology differentiator."

In Africa, he says, Seacom has seen some progress in increasing Internet penetration, but the goalposts keep shifting.

"Many, perhaps even most, Internet connections on the continent are sub-1Mbs connections that do not meet the insatiable demand among businesses and consumers for fast and plentiful bandwidth."

In Africa, he adds, one major factor driving demand for high-performance bandwidth is a growing and youthful population that sees connectivity as a fundamental right, he adds.

"For them, broadband spells access to educational, economic and social opportunities. Mobile broadband has an important role to play, but fibre-based fixed-line infrastructure is also vitally important in connecting mobile towers and giving users affordable last-mile access to high-speed services."

Ramdhani says many elements of the ecosystem have come together in Africa for a boom in high-speed Internet access. For example, an explosion in local data centres and the deployment of on-continent content caches has brought global content closer to the end-user, improving their experience dramatically.

In addition, open-access infrastructure players have reduced barriers to entry for innovative service providers, meaning that fibre to the business and home is becoming increasingly viable in African metropolitan regions. "There is fibre from city-to-city and fibre in rings around the cities, but not enough to businesses' and consumers' doorsteps," says Ramdhani. "Changing this is a priority for Seacom this year."

Seacom is also focusing on connecting into more countries as backhaul becomes economically viable and expanding its ring around Africa, with aspirations to the West. "With such low broadband penetration and with such high demand for data volumes, the growth possibilities are tremendous," says Ramdhani.

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