The cost of fibre connectivity has come down to $600 per megabyte per month. Photo/FILE
Consumers will continue to pay high Internet prices due to fear by local providers of damage on under sea fibre optic cables, which forces them to rely on the more expensive satellite for uninterrupted services.
Currently, repairs are being done on SE-ME-WE 4 or SMW4 cable which most local telecom operators rely on for connectivity between United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Europe.
The repairs, on a faulty equipment (repeater) at sea, started on April 25, 2010 and are expected to be completed by the end of this month.
The defect was identified two weeks ago and did not affect traffic, but it was feared that it would cause problems if it was not repaired in time.
Due to the ongoing maintenance work, infrastructure providers, such as Seacom and some investors in TEAMs connected to a SMW4 cable had to reroute their traffic to satellite.
It was expected that the undersea cables would reduce the cost of internet from $6000 to $200 per megabyte per month, but the bulk consumers are paying an additional $2500 per megabyte per month for satellite connectivity the providers are using for redundancy purposes.
The cost of fibre connectivity has come down to $600 per megabyte per month.
However, the cost of maintaining the satellite service by the infrastructure providers are passed on to consumers and together with other overheads such as interconnection charges to Europe is making it difficult for end users to realise a maximum price reduction on the international bandwidth charges.
Telkom Kenya chief executive officer, Mickael Ghossein, said that despite the fact that satellite capacity is eight times more expensive than fibre they are yet to terminate their satellite service as it provides them with redundancy.
“Satellite capacity is costly but this is the best way to protect our customers. We have, however, decreased sharply our Internet prices so that customers can enjoy benefit of submarine cable prices and quality,” said Mr Ghossein.
“We have submarine capacity from TEAMs and Seacom, with the latter serving as a redundancy link in case of any issues with the former. However, the Seacom cable laying is not complete although it has made landfall in East Africa.”
Seacom connects South Africa to Europe through the East African coast, but is building a second link to Europe through the west Africa coast.
Safaricom and Kenya Data Networks have also maintained their contracts with satellite providers to guarantee their clients uninterrupted services.
KDN chief marketing officer, Vincent Wangombe, said they still maintain satellite capacity and provide it to their clients on demand.
Those clients seeking both fibre and satellite have to pay an extra $2500 per month for one megabyte of satellite connectivity on top of the current $600 for the same fibre capacity.
“The cost of satellite is transferred to the client and we make it very clear to them,” said Mr Wang’ombe.
It was hoped that a reduction in prices of international bandwidth would spur internet uptake in the country and boost sectors such as Business Process Outsourcing BPO, which in turn was expected to create employment opportunities and make the local BPO as competitive their peers in India and Philippines.
Affordable international Internet is also vital to businesses and organisations as it helps to cut down their operational costs thus reducing the cost of doing business.
However, not all TEAMs anchor shareholders are on SMW4, as each shareholders was to negotiate independently their onward connectivity from Fujairah to Europe, meaning that there are those whose traffic was not interfered with.
They include Jamii Telecoms Ltd and KDN which have diversified routes to Europe.
For example, Jamii Telecoms is using Emirates Internet Exchange EIX which has multiple cables linking Fujairah to Europe.
Some of the providers that have been forced to reroute their traffic to satellite are Telkom Kenya and Safaricom.
While some Internet providers said they usually inform their clients about the satellite charges being passed on to them, others said they did not as it was a business overhead just like salaries or another.
Safaricom Chief executive officer, Michael Joseph, said the company had been forced to reroute its clients to Europe via satellite.
“In order to ensure service continuity for our customers, we have made alternative arrangements on TEAMS and have re-routed our traffic through Asia and via Satellite. Our commitment is to ensure that our customers continue with their operations uninterrupted and experience the service levels they have come to expect from us,” said Mr Joseph.
Safaricom does not foresee any service interruption during this period in light of restoration arrangements that have been made, which are already operational.
Safaricom is an anchor shareholder in TEAMs, which gives it about 22 per cent share of the data pipe.
It is also a major buyer of capacity on Seacom, with the undersea cables being a key plank of its overall data offering.
