Broadband hits East and South Africa – the present and future of SEACOM:
In terms of what SEACOM can bring to Africans, Herlihy mentioned that African SEACOM partners are beginning or planning to rollout very interesting products using the additional bandwidth. Herlihy gave the examples of Cisco Telepresence, which has numerous possibilities, such as linking government ministries, and health facilities.
“The digitalisation of post-production in South Africa, has also been hugely effected,” said Herlihy. Virtual private networks laid on top of SEACOM for example, are being used by production houses in Cape Town to send large post-production files back and forth between Hollywood.
Other exciting initiatives have been proposed by the likes of Paramount, who want to stream HD movies into Africa, and musician Mos Def, who is looking into live streaming of concerts into Africa.
Reduced rates to educational institutions have been one of the development goals for SEACOM, with an agreement with the TENET NPO highlighted as the major deal for South Africa. “This provides 10 Gb/s to TENET networks at about US$7 per megabit,” said Herlihy.
“The next big [thing] is cloud computing. What you actually have to hold in your hand can be a pretty simple device, and applications from the cloud can be as sophisticated as you want. This is most exciting for Africa … as cloud computing is the ultimate in economy of scale,” said Herlihy.
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The most rewarding moments for Herlihy include receiving a call from Kenyan ISP Safaricom, saying they have experienced a 200% increase in data usage.
“So many young African developers have come up to me and said ‘Thank you’ for enabling me to achieve what wasn’t possible without access to bandwidth,” said Herlihy.
The President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, met with Herlihy, and thanked him personally for the arrival of SEACOM in the country. “President Kagame said to me, ‘What we’ve been trying to do as a government, SEACOM has enabled – allowing us to communicate regionally’ – to get a compliment from a person like that, is really cool.”
