Manufacturing work on a new regional submarine cable that will connect three East African nations has been completed.

The Djibouti Africa Regional Express (DARE1) cable system will stretch 4 854 km, with landing stations in Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya, as reported by the Submarine Telecoms Forum. At a forecast project cost of US$86 million, the cable will have 100 Gbps capacity per wavelength. The cable is owned by a consortium comprising Djibouti Telecom, Somtel, Telkom Kenya and SubCom.

‘This investment will offer diversity in the routing of traffic and will also provide for fibre continuity, cognisant of the risk on the high seas,’ says Kebaso Mokogi, MD of Telkom Kenya’s carrier services. ‘The development of regional backbones such as the DARE1 will also increase access to data in the region, with eventual gains being realised on cost for the end consumer.’

The project is expected to be ready for commercial traffic by June 2020.

17 December 2019
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