MTN invests in $700m Europe-India cable

The MTN Group is investing in a new $700 million submarine cable system, the European Indian Gateway (EIG), to be built by Alcatel-Lucent starting next month.

The 15,000 kilometre-long high bandwidth optical-fibre will connect Europe and India from the United Kingdom to Portugal, Gibraltar, Monaco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates.

The cable’s purpose is to provide a central linking point for other cable syatems already in the pipeline such as the East African Submarine Cable System (Eassy) and the West African Cable System (WACS), which MTN also has a stake in.

The project is expected to be completed by the middle of 2010 and link other planned cable systems in Africa to global telecommunications infrastructure via Asia and Europe.

Installation of the EIG cable, which is equipped with upgradeable transmission facilities, is expected to increase efficiency and reduce operating costs for Internet connections, e-commerce, video, data and voice services, among other broadband services.

The undersea cable will also provide the first direct, high bandwidth optical-fibre submarine cable system from the United Kingdom to India.

The MTN Group is involved in other undersea cable ventures in partnership with other operators, but according to Noel Meier, MTN Uganda chief executive officer, “Wholly owned infrastructure creates opportunity to reduce costs even further and deliver even better quality to end users.

MTN’s investment in EIG is therefore a step toward affordable and high quality global broadband connectivity to meet the varied and changing needs of our customers.”

EIG will provide seamless interconnections and capacity of up to 3.84 terabits per second with seamless links to major cables in North America as well.

Other project financiers include Telecom Egypt, Telkom South Africa, US-based Verizon Business, Bharti Telecom of India and Djibouti Telecom.

Introduction of the EIG cable is anticipated to heighten interest in East Africa’s Internet broadband sector, which is already gearing up for three major fibre-optic cables in coming months.

The cables are Eassy, Seacom, Teams (The East African Marine Cable System) sponsored by the Kenyan government.

These are intended to address perennial constraints of low capacity and high cost satellite services for international telecommunications needs.

The cables will provide enhanced voice and data services that are severely limited by low capacity and expensive broadband facilities.

For the three submarine cables that are expected to land in Mombasa, two in Dar esSalaam with a combined capacity of over two terabits.