SEACOM: journalists visit the undersea landing station at Mtunzini

[The Times] BRIAN Herlihy has nightmares about pirates. The chief executive of the 600-million Seacom undersea cable that links Africa with Europe and India was trying to explain why the much-publicised project went through a quiet period at one point, as the cable was laid off the horn of Africa.

“You don’t think in a modern world, you would have a board agenda item that said ‘pirates’,” he joked about why the Seacom website stopped showing where the ships were laying the cable.

“The pirates are media savvy,” he said.

It’s an interesting anecdote in a remarkable project that is finally about to go online at the end of this month. Remarkable because it has taken only two years, while other undersea cables started in 2002 and 2003 are still far from finished.

Remarkable because Seacom is the first real competition to the only undersea cable, called SAT3, feeding South Africa. And remarkable because not only does it bring much great capacity — 1.2 terabits per second, which is 10 times more than SAT3’s estimated 120 gigabits per second — but it will radically reduce the wholesale cost of bringing the Internet to Africa’s shores.

Herlihy said the wholesale price of international bandwidth has already come down about 50 percent since Seacom’s 2007 beginning and he expects a further 40 to 50 percent drop. How much Johan Public gets of this is the next big question. But for now, it is just remarkable to know the (real) broadband revolution can truly begin.

Last Thursday Seacom took an excited — even giddy — busload of tech journalists, bloggers, radio DJs and TV crews to Mtunzini, the South African landing point.

It may be apt to compare it to the 52,000 enthusiastic Bulls supporters at Loftus on Saturday night as they won the Super 14, but the journos didn’t paint themselves blue or wear helmets with (real) horns on them. But as I wandered around Loftus before what would be a record-breaking, fan-deranging game, that same sense of victory was in the air.

Anyone who has experienced real broadband overseas — and especially the country’s top web- savvy geeks and journos on that bus — knows what a difference that always-on, super-fast and cheap broadband makes to your Internet experience — and ultimately what innovation it makes possible.

I’ve often been asked why South Africa doesn’t produce Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other of the new breed of Internet companies and entrepeneurs. Simple — no broadband. No cheap broadband. But not for much longer.

The sleepy little town of Mtunzini is the most wired place in South Africa right now.

A railway siding with a few houses about 140km north of Durban, the Seacom complex is a few buildings on the outskirts of Mtunzini where the undersea cable finally hooks up to the South African network.

Stretching 17,000km down the east coast of Africa along the ocean floor, where it is buried in some places, the cable is thickly wrapped in insulation and even armoured. But when it comes up through a hole in the floor of an air-conditioned server room, the business part of it is a yellow wire no bigger than my finger.

The three fibre optic cables inside it are each the width of a human hair. It’s worth staring at. And worth geeking out about for just a bit. Modern technology really is remarkable, even if we’re all so familiar with its benefits.

But it is a new week. Perhaps we’ll have the dawn of a new era with Internet access becoming as cheap and bountiful as the US, Europe and Asia.

Perhaps Pieter de Villiers won’t try to experiment and field untested players in the all-important British and Irish Lions Tests when he names his Springbok squad tonight.

Our immediate Internet and rugby future is in a few hands. Let’s hope they have the good sense to do the right thing. — Shapshak is editor of Stuff magazine, and an ardent Springbok fan (in case that wasn’t obvious).

Farewell to broadband blues