Fibre optic cables remain crucial to Africa due to their ability to serve high capacity demand more cost effectively than satellite connections, according to SEACOM chief executive officer (CEO) Mark Simpson.
Simpson told HumanIPO there was increasing demand for fibre connectivity on the continent, which he expected to continue.
“Fibre is critical as it is the only medium that can serve high capacity demand cost-effectively,” he said. “Demand is still rising across Africa. We still see exponential growth in demand, as end-users start consuming more online services such as video and storage. Demand saturation is not a concern!”
His remarks follow those of SEACOM’s former group strategy and business development executive Aidan Baigrie, who told the Broadband Summit last month submarine cables still had relevance in Africa due to their ability to provide large amounts of bandwidth, thus lowering costs.
“Smartphones are now as affordable as feature phones were two years ago,” Baigrie said. “Smartphones are the largest consumers of data on earth.”
Simpson agreed, and added that fibre was also “crucial for backhauling the capacity from mobile sites to the Internet Gateways and for carriage between base stations. Increasing terrestrial fibre density and reach is essential to enabling continued broadband penetration and growth.”
HumanIPO reported yesterday Simpson’s pledge SEACOM would conduct a full post-mortem on cable cuts that in recent weeks that resulted in connectivity problems for many of its customers.
