On 2/28/12 9:06 AM, James Mbugua wrote:
Brian
TEAMS general manager Joel Tanui said it will take three weeks although that may be to avoid over promising.
I'm told Eassy also has a cut near Djibouti and is currently being repaired.
Operators now have no option but to switch to the very expensive Seacom. By some accounts it is three times as expensive as TEAMS.
Safaricom which carries 80 per cent of Kenya's internet traffic usually has 50 per cent going through TEAMS and has switched this to Seacom.
IMHO we need to have a clearer understanding of the bigger picture to set the long term goals and objectives. 1. Today we import more than 80% of the Internet traffic consumed in Kenya causing an "Internet Transit Deficit" where significantly less Internet traffic is generated locally than accessed from overseas, similar to what was experienced between Europe and the US during the late 1990’s. 2. We are dependent on a single East-Bound path from "Nairobi - Mombasa - (Mumbai/Fujaira) before going to Europe. This is despite the fact that we have terrestrial capacity from Cape Town to Cairo to provide an North-bound path that would complement the longer path. 3. The BBC article did not mention that, with the Submarine cable cuts the Internet traffic between the East African Countries Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda are most adversely affected. My current tests are showing over 1sec latency from Nairobi to some networks in Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda. This is despite the reality that Uganda and Rwanda are largely dependent on the terrestrial cables passing through Kenya onto the cables. 4. South bound Internet traffic (to Southern Africa) has acquires satellite like latencies (higher than 500ms). As a result of the cable cuts. There's more than sufficient capacity terrestrially but we still have to go to Europe before going back South. If we can work towards resolving the above issues with concrete plans and solutions. Its likely that such cable cuts in the future will not cause the level of attention and anxiety that we see are experiencing today. My 2 cents. Regards, Michuki.