EASSy is a 1.3 Tbps (terabits per second) submarine optical fibre cable system that will link Mtunzini in Northern kwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, to East Africa, and onwards to the Middle East, landing in South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Comores, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan.
It is a joint project of more than twenty telecoms operators from across the continent and beyond, including Neotel, Telkom, Vodacom, MTN, Botswana Telecoms Corporation, Zamtel Zambia, Mauritius Telecom, Comoros Telecom, Telecom Malagasy, TTCL Tanzania, Sudatel Sudan, Dalkom Somalia, France Telecom, British Telecom, and WIOCC, itself a consortium including U-COM Burundi, Onatel Burundi, Djibouti Telecom, Telkom Kenya Orange, Lesotho Telecoms Authority, Libya PTITC, TDM Mozambique, Gilat Satcom Nigeria, Government of Seychelles, Zanzibar Telecom, and TelOne Zimbabwe, with various international debt funding institutions.
Neotel recently hosted the EASSy Assignment Routing & Restoration Sub-committee, which finalised, amongst others, the restoration plan of EASSy cable in the event of unforeseen breakages, to ensure high availability of services. Other issues finalised included capacity activation and de-activation, the readiness of the backhaul routes, and physical testing of compatibility of cables in different countries, demonstrating the readiness of the EASSy cable to go live.
