East African Submarine System

East African Submarine System
Name	East African Submarine System
Type	Submarine communications cable
Status	Operational
Owners	Consortium of regional and international carriers
Length km	~?
Capacity	Terabits per second (design)
First service	21st century

East African Submarine System The East African Submarine System is a submarine communications cable linking coastal hubs along the Horn of Africa and the wider East African littoral to global networks. Conceived to interconnect regional carriers, internet exchanges, and international carriers, the project involves consortium partners, landing parties, and regional authorities to provide high-capacity transmission between nodes in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

Overview

The project unites stakeholders from across Africa and beyond, including consortium members drawn from Telecom Egypt, Safaricom, MTN Group, Vodafone Group, Orange S.A., China Telecom, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone, Bharti Airtel, Vodacom, Zain Group, Etisalat, Reliance Jio, Telecom Italia (TIM), Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Telkom Kenya, Sudatel, Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation, Djibouti Telecom, Somtel, Somalia Telecom Group, Tanzania Telecommunications Company Limited (TTCL), Uganda Communications Commission, Rwanda Utilities Regulatory Authority, Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications (Ethiopia), Ministry of Transport and Communications (Kenya), Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts (Djibouti), and multinational investors such as World Bank, African Development Bank, International Monetary Fund, European Investment Bank, Exim Bank of China, Export-Import Bank of Korea, and private equity firms.

History and Development

Initial planning drew on precedents set by systems like SEACOM, EASSy, TEAMS (cable system), LION (cable system), Airtel Submarine Cable and FLAG (cable system), with feasibility studies commissioned from firms such as Alcatel Submarine Networks, Nexans, NEC Corporation, Fujitsu, Prysmian Group, Huawei Marine Networks, SubCom, and TE SubCom. Negotiations referenced regulatory frameworks from agencies including International Telecommunication Union, African Union, Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, East African Community, Communauté de l'Afrique de l'Est, and national regulators like Communications Authority of Kenya and National Communications Authority (Ghana) for spectrum and rights of way alignment. Contracts were awarded following bidding processes involving engineering consultancy by Det Norske Veritas (DNV), Lloyd's Register, and legal counsel from firms linked to Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance, Allen & Overy, reflecting cross-border finance models used in West Africa Cable System and MainOne.

Technical Specifications

The system employs fiber pair architectures comparable to WACS and SEA-ME-WE 3, using submarine optical fiber with erbium-doped fiber amplifiers and dense wavelength-division multiplexing transponders supplied by vendors like Cisco Systems, Ciena, Infinera, Huawei, ZTE Corporation, and Ekinops. Repeaters and branching units were designed with hardware from Xtera, COHERENT, and Sterlite Technologies. Cable burial and laying operations referenced standards from International Cable Protection Committee and utilized vessels similar to CS Sovereign, CS Chamarel, Lewek Connector, and Normand Cutter. Power feed equipment, optical supervisory channel systems, and monitoring used protocols standardized by ITU-T G.652 and ITU-T G.655.

Cable Route and Landing Stations

Planned landings link metropolitan exchange points and coastal cities including Mombasa, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar City, Lamu, Kilifi, Tanga, Mogadishu, Bossaso, Garowe, Berbera, Djibouti City, Aden, Mersa Matruh, Port Sudan, Massawa, Assab, Kismayo, Mtwara, Zanzibar Stone Town, Kigali (via terrestrial) and interconnects to onward systems reaching Aden Governorate, Jeddah, Dubai, Muscat, Salalah, Mumbai, Colombo, Chennai, Singapore, Perth, Auckland, and European hubs such as Suez Canal Zone, Sicily, Marseille, Farnet, Falmouth and Bude. Landing station operation partners include entities like Equinix, Telehouse, MFS Africa, Tata Communications, Airtel Africa, Liquid Telecom, and national incumbents.

Operations and Maintenance

Operational governance follows a consortium model similar to Apollo (cable system) and TAT-14 with a mix of landing party agreements, maintenance agreements (MA) and joint use clauses modeled after EIG (Europe India Gateway). Maintenance coordination uses fleet charters referencing repair time objectives from International Cable Protection Committee guidance and standby agreements with cable ships operated by SubCom, IHC Merwede, Boskalis, Jan De Nul, and Van Oord. Network operations centers integrate systems from IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Juniper Networks, Arista Networks, Huawei, and Ericsson, and rely on peering arrangements at internet exchanges such as Kenya Internet Exchange Point (KIXP), Djibouti Internet Exchange, Tanzania Internet Exchange, DE-CIX Marseille, and LINX.

Capacity, Traffic and Economic Impact

Designed capacity draws on technologies used in SEA-ME-WE 5 and Marea (cable), enabling multi-terabit throughput to support carriers, hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Meta Platforms, and content delivery networks such as Akamai Technologies, Cloudflare, Fastly. Economic analyses referenced by World Bank and African Development Bank estimate impacts on digital services, fintech platforms like M-Pesa, Paga, Flutterwave, content production hubs resembling Nollywood, and sectors including offshore trade through Port of Mombasa, Port of Dar es Salaam, and Djibouti Port. Studies align with regional development plans from Vision 2030 (Kenya), Ethiopia Growth and Transformation Plan, Tanzania Development Vision 2025, and Somalia National Development Plan.

Security, Incidents and Resilience

Security planning addresses risks documented in incidents involving SEACOM, EASSy, FLAG and undersea outages near Red Sea chokepoints affecting Suez Canal traffic, drawing on maritime law from United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and guidance from International Maritime Organization. Protections include route diversity strategies, rapid repair clauses, coordinated threat assessments with navies such as Kenyan Navy, Tanzanian People's Defence Force Navy, Djibouti Armed Forces, and alliances like African Union and Combined Task Force 151. Cybersecurity frameworks reference NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO/IEC 27001 and cooperative measures with regional CERTs including Kenya Computer Incident Response Team, Tanzania National ICT Infrastructure Agency CERT, AfricaCERT, and global bodies such as FIRST.

Category:Submarine communications cables in the Indian Ocean