Seacom Technology Brochure – 2011

Seacom Technology

AN AFRICAN MISSION TO PROVIDE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET

Seacom is based in Mauritius

Seacom Technology

AN AFRICAN MISSION TO PROVIDE HIGH-SPEED INTERNET Undersea cable specialists continue to help Africa to bridge the digital divide WRITTEN By Melissa Rudd Produced BY Craig Daniels

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EACOM is a privately owned and operated panAfrican broadband network operator whose head office is based in Mauritius.

It financed and developed the first broadband submarine cable system along the eastern and southern African coastlines, originating from London in a route approximately 17,00km long.

The cable went live in July 2009, although the process of bringing a vast supply of high quality and affordable internet began 18 months prior to launch, costing between US$400,000 and $600,000.

Aidan Baigrie, Head of Business Development, states that the cable enabled “this region in Africa to plug into a major low cost and affordable pipe to give the sort of broadband speeds that people in the rest of the world take for granted.�

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How undersea cables are laid

OPERATIONS

SEACOM offers a number of services other than the standard internet, including an International Private Line (IPL), Ethernet, IP Transit and IP Virtual Private Network (IP VPN).

One of the reasons the company stands out in the industry, says Baigrie, is its neutrality. “We are the only privately owned and privately

Hello World / 2289

When we laid the IS backbone, we gave Africa a light-speed connection to the world. Combined with our Managed VPN network and satellite uplinks, you can connect throughout Africa and to the world in seconds. So now ideas are shared freely, people interact instantly, and a continent grows exponentially.

www.is.co.za

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Pre-cable laying shore-end preparation, Mombasa, Kenya

funded cable operator in southern Africa. We have a full open access system. There are no shareholders in the telecoms industry getting better rates, everyone is treated equally.”

This objectivity is an important part of SEACOM’s mantra. “We are not run by a consortium – we do not believe in preferential or worse pricing depending.

No matter who or where you are, you will benefit from the same service and cost,” he adds.

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SUPPLIER STATS

INTERNET SOLUTIONS (IS) a division of Dimension Data

Employees: over 1,300

EST’d: 1993

Industry: Telecommunications Provided Services: IS is an Internet Protocol-based Communications Service Provider, today it has the most stable, resilient and redundant network available in South Africa and offers a wide range of services; IS offers Connectivity, Carrier, Communication and Cloud services.

On-Going Projects: Since inception IS has been at the forefront of telecommunications innovation. It has the largest MPLS network in SA and in excess of 3500 VSAT terminals on the African continent. IS has made significant investment into SEACOM, making IS the perfect partner to provide redundancy to SAT3/ SAFE – further investments into WACS. IS has world-class data centres in South Africa with over 8000m2 of co-location space.

Management: > Derek Wilcocks, Managing Director

Visit Website

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Brian Herlihy, CEO

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Aidan Baigrie, Head of Business Development

“Everywhere we land in Africa whether its on shore or mainland we are a wholesale provider, not only limited to ISPs or big telecom customers.”

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The service has been brought inland to Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa.

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Your expectations.

We understand them. We embrace them.

We aim to exceed them.

Dimension Data stands ready to help you respond to your unique challenges. While technology lies at the heart of our solutions, we believe true business value is achieved through people – yours and ours. We bring energy, passion and dedication to each relationship. Whatever your ambitions, we believe Dimension Data will accelerate them.

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SEACOM is the only privately owned and privately funded cable operator in southern Africa

SEACOM provides wholesale broadband services to all the major operators, carriers and communication service providers, and Baigrie says in some cases this is 95 percent cheaper than what they were paying previously.

SEACOM’s goal is to “disrupt some old monopolies that have been hindering Africa’s attempt to bridge

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the digital divide” and continually evolve and expand into new countries.

SOCIO-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Dimension Data Employees: 12,382 Globally and 5,500 based in the Middle East & Africa Region EST’d: 1983 Industry: ICT & system integration Services: Technology infrastructure, networking, security, data centre and storage solutoins Management: > Allan Cawood, CEO Visit Website

SEACOM also views its commitment to education and socio-economic development of paramount importance and offers vastly “Educational institutions of bandwidth and share it b “We allow them to do this using for non commercial STAFF MANAGEMENT

SEACOM employs 70 fullemploys a range of contrac The company says that

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SEACOM strives to offer value for investment in Africa’s future

t ly reduced cost rate prices for non-commercial customers. are among our biggest customers. They buy huge chunks between universities,� says Baigrie. s at cost rate due to our socio-economic investment. Anyone use has an ability to get it at vastly reduced cost price.�

-time staff, 90 percent of which are African. It also ctors and sub-contractors on a daily basis. t being a high profile organisation in an exciting,

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SUPPLIER STATS Ciena Employees: 4,200 Industry: Networking Equipment Services: High-Capacity Optical Transport & Switching Visit Website

Video clip showing how undersea cables are repaired

technology-driven industry attracts young, qualified and enthusiastic staff.

“We provide a stimulating work environment and have a strong focus on continuous improvement and training of our staff. We have to ensure our employees grow as quickly as the market does,” says Baigrie.

TECHNOLOGY

SEACOM’s operations depend upon its state-of-theart fibre optic cable that pushes 1.28 Terabits of data

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per second, however it is “easily possible for us to quadruple this to 5.12 Terabits by upgrading our technology”, Baigrie says.

In addition to this, performance of the cable in Africa as well as Europe and India can be monitored at any given moment.

Internally, SEACOM uses cloud-based software services to manage operations, which allows Aidan Baigr for maximum security Business De needed in a company that is “as geographically diverse as SEACOM is”.

Building reputation a and being c to holding African internet our dre

CLIENT BASE

SEACOM says that it is devoted to serving its clients,

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spending a lot of time with them. Due to the nature of the industry being high-scale internet, it becomes business to business.

“They are so critical to our sustainability, which is why we place such importance on delivering results,” Baigrie states.

“We believe that in an industry like ours where there is a lot of healthy competition, we should support our competitors rie, Head of and not bad mouth them. evelopment That has always been our philosophy.

“Building a reliable reputation as objective and being committed to holding the African internet – that’s our dream and it attracts customers.”

ding a reliable as objective committed ding the internet – that’s dream

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STRENGTH THROUGH RECESSION

The growth in the number of African internet users of 195 million year-on-year growth between 2009 and 2010 has made the continent somewhat “recession proof” in terms of the online market.

“It is something we have always lived with,” Baigrie asserts. “But we are fortunate to be

Crew works aboard CS Tyco Resolute to lay cable

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in a sector that’s experiencing unhindered growth during the downturn.”

THE FUTURE

SEACOM’s vision extends much further beyond its own ambitions. Not only does it aim to have a presence in all African countries without bandwidth, it wants to

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Fibre optic cable stored in the ship hull

be part of an African revolution.

“Five years in our industry is a lifetime. You only hav internet was like in 2006 compared to now to see how muc “We want to see a whole lot of content for the intern African continent, rather than having to fetch web pages a US and Europe. We want to continue making wholesale ensure Africans that their continent is alive and well, red between them and the rest of the world,” Baigrie signs of

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STATISTICS

Name: Seacom Technology Country: South Africa Employees: 70 Est: 2009 Industry: Telecommunications

ve to look at what Africa’s ch it has changed. net being produced on the and content from the UK, internet available and ducing that digital gap ff. afbr

Premiere service: IPL, Extended IP product suite (Ethernet, IP Transit, Internet, IP VPN) CEO: Brian Herlihy Website: www.seacom.mu

Seacom Technology 13A King George V Ave, Floreal, Mauritius T: +230 698 4000 E: info@seacom.mu www.seacom.mu

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