SEACOM has begun construction on landing stations in Kenya and Mozambique with the intention of beating The East African Marine System (TEAMs) in the race to connect the Eastern and Southern African coasts.

SEACOM's 15,000 kilometers of fiber-optic undersea cable are expected to link Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania to Europe and India by June 2009, while TEAMs is now expected to be operational by the following September.

"The project is progressing in line with our manufacturing and deployment schedules, and we remain firmly on track to go live in June 2009," said SEACOM President Brian Herlihy.

The company is now working on the construction and installation of prefabricated cable station buildings in Maputo, Mozambique. In Mombasa, Kenya, foundations are underway for similar prefabricated stations, which are already in the country and will be ready for installation on-site in December.

"The first load of assembled cable and repeaters is on its way to the region and is scheduled to start soon," Herlihy noted. "Loading of the second shipload of cable will begin this month and head towards Africa early in 2009."

The third and final shipload of cable and repeaters will follow shortly thereafter, and the entire SEACOM network will connect all cable sections together off the horn of Africa in the second quarter of 2009, he said.

Meanwhile, Herlihy said, the first team of technical staff for the East African landing stations has been selected and will begin training this month.

"With only eight months to go before the system is ready for service, SEACOM remains set to be the first cable to connect east and southern Africa to the rest of the world with plentiful and inexpensive bandwidth," Herlihy said.

"We are particularly pleased with the recent groundbreakings in Kenya and Mozambique," he added. "This important milestone gave SEACOM an actual land-based footprint that will allow Tyco Telecommunications, our turnkey project contractor, to install the high-speed optical transmission equipment at these sites soon."

SEACOM, which is privately funded and over three-quarters African owned, will assist communication carriers in South and East Africa through the sale of wholesale international capacity to global networks via India and Europe.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.