{"id":11068,"date":"2012-06-04T22:47:48","date_gmt":"2012-06-04T20:47:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/06\/investors-mull-1-5-billion-brics-undersea-cable\/"},"modified":"2012-06-04T22:47:48","modified_gmt":"2012-06-04T20:47:48","slug":"investors-mull-1-5-billion-brics-undersea-cable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/investors-mull-1-5-billion-brics-undersea-cable\/","title":{"rendered":"Investors mull $1.5 billion BRICS undersea cable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">CAPE TOWN, June 4<\/span> (Reuters) &#8211; Potential investors including<br \/>\nInternet giant Google will decide before year-end<br \/>\nwhether to proceed with a $1.5 billion undersea cable linking<br \/>\nthe BRICS group of emerging economies to each other and the<br \/>\nU.S., a senior official in the project said on Monday.<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The 34,000 km cable, which would be the first of its kind to<br \/>\nlink Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is expected<br \/>\nto come online by the end of 2014, said Andrew Mthembu, chairman<br \/>\nof technology group i3 Africa which is promoting the project.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m hoping within the coming six months we will all be in a<br \/>\nposition to get all the consortium members into some sort of<br \/>\nagreement, and then from there it&#8217;s then a 24 month period for<br \/>\nmanufacture and installation,&#8221; he said on the sidelines of a<br \/>\ntelecommunications conference.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The cable, first proposed in May last year, would also<br \/>\nconnect with existing undersea cables, opening access to 21<br \/>\nAfrican countries, Mthembu said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Africa is currently connected to Europe, North America and<br \/>\nAsia through nine undersea cables, with five more submarine<br \/>\nlinks planned by 2014, South Africa&#8217;s communication minister<br \/>\nDina Pule told the conference.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All of these cable connections should help improve the<br \/>\nconnection to our new trade partners, reduce the cost to<br \/>\ncommunicate and improve the quality of the Internet services,&#8221;<br \/>\nshe said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Although Internet penetration in Africa has grown to 12.8<br \/>\npercent in 2010 from 2.4 percent in 2006, four-fifths of the<br \/>\ncontinent&#8217;s one billion population still has no access to it,<br \/>\nofficials said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CAPE TOWN, June 4 (Reuters) &#8211; 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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-11068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}