Subsea Roundup 5/29: GBI, SEAS, WACS

A quick look at some items from under the sea overseas to help start the week:

Gulf Bridge International (news) continued to advance following its launch earlier this year with a capacity sale to the Kuwaiti wireless operator Mada. The additional bandwidth will help Mada offer improved internet services. It’s GBI’s third such deal with the Kuwaiti market, highlighting their advantageous position as the only regionally owned carrier neutral cable in the Persian Gulf.

Further to the south in the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles East Africa System has landed at Beau Vallon Bay. The SEAS cable stretches 1,900km from the east coast of Africa, where there is now an abundance of bandwidth to hook up to.  They’ve been working on this build since last Spring with a projected cost of just €27M.

And Telegeography also offered an interesting look into the connectivity soap opera in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They are apparently four months behind scheduled with their link to the new WACS system, now looking at August. And they’re also planning on building a 2,000km cable between the capital Kinshasa on the coast and Lubumbashi in the southeast corner of the country, with China apparently doing the heavy lifting.  Lots of catch-up work yet to do in the DRC, not that this is particularly surprising.

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Categories: Undersea cables