ICTworks by Inveneo

To great fanfare the Seacom fiber optic cable from London to South Africa, was turned on this past Thursday. Offering 10,000 Mbps capacity to bandwidth starved East Africans, there was great hope that connection speeds would instantly jump once the cable was turned on.

Seacom fiber optic cable

But it seems that not only will bandwidth capacity remain spotty, it will also stay relatively expensive for a while longer. Seacom is not revealing which Internet Service Providers have signed up for the bandwidth, and none of the ISPs are lowering rates. As Twitter chatter and The Times confirms, they are only speaking of increasing bandwidth caps, and only in "coming soon" terms:

An executive of a leading Internet service provider, who would not be named, said: "There will be no impact on the consumer. International broadband is a small component of data consumption , unless you’re a huge corporation constantly moving data to Europe."

Frost and Sullivan ICT analyst Lindsey McDonald, said: “The changes will be gradual. We’ll most likely see better packages, higher speeds and more value in general as suppliers feel the need to compete."

So while Kenya and Uganda Internet users wait impatiently for bandwidth relief, Benin is experiencing a whole other undersea cable bandwidth issue. Theresa Carpenter Sondjo reports that:

In the wee hours of the morning, a ship dropped anchor and cut Benin’s undersea connection to the world. White collar workers in Cotonou and business men flipped, but the vast majority of the country (99% and counting) won’t notice any difference in their daily lives. Maybe bank transactions will be a bit tougher, but that’s par for the course here anyway.

And of course, there’s no way to be sure that the problem is the undersea cable. Or that it was an anchor. Friends of ours who work for Benin Telecoms have whispered it, others have refused to confirm anything at all. There is no official word (and may not be). Repair estimates for whatever has happened vary from 2 days to 2 weeks.

Until then, the few public satellite Internet cafes are being mobbed. Lines to use computers are out the door and down the block. And while its little solace to East Africa, may they count themselves lucky to have Internet bandwidth at all.