In large parts of Africa there is, at best, a telephone in the neighboring village. Meanwhile, mobile phone usage is at impressively 37 percent and increasing steadily.
This puts pressure on mobile operators.
Already in 2012, the penetration is estimated to reach 60 percent. And because desktops are rare in Africa, individuals use the mobile phone to surf the Internet.
At the same time, it is difficult to use cable in Africa. They have a tendency to go off from time to time. So the cables may instead be placed in the sea off the coast.
A new such cable is SEACOM, a 17,000 kilometer long submarine cable linking Africa with India and Europe. SEACOM can handle a powerful 1.28 terabits per second. The cable that was opened to traffic last month cost 650 million dollars.
Cecilia Helland