CAPE TOWN, June 4 (Reuters) – Potential investors including
Internet giant Google will decide before year-end
whether to proceed with a $1.5 billion undersea cable linking
the BRICS group of emerging economies to each other and the
U.S., a senior official in the project said on Monday.
The 34,000 km cable, which would be the first of its kind to
link Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is expected
to come online by the end of 2014, said Andrew Mthembu, chairman
of technology group i3 Africa which is promoting the project.
“I’m hoping within the coming six months we will all be in a
position to get all the consortium members into some sort of
agreement, and then from there it’s then a 24 month period for
manufacture and installation,” he said on the sidelines of a
telecommunications conference.
The cable, first proposed in May last year, would also
connect with existing undersea cables, opening access to 21
African countries, Mthembu said.
Africa is currently connected to Europe, North America and
Asia through nine undersea cables, with five more submarine
links planned by 2014, South Africa’s communication minister
Dina Pule told the conference.
“All of these cable connections should help improve the
connection to our new trade partners, reduce the cost to
communicate and improve the quality of the Internet services,”
she said.
Although Internet penetration in Africa has grown to 12.8
percent in 2010 from 2.4 percent in 2006, four-fifths of the
continent’s one billion population still has no access to it,
officials said.
