THIS JUST IN:
Steve Song at Many Possibilities just chirped to let me know that Alcatel-Lucent, the company contracted to build out EASSy’s 10,000Km undersea cable, announced yesterday that it’s going to deliver 1.4 terabytes of capacity for EASSy, which is due to dock on East and Southern African shores in the 2010 timeframe. What’s interesting though, is that Steve has updated the TEAMS projected bandwidth increase to 1.2 terabytes. With these two increases, East Africa’s fibre backhaul capacity will top out just north of 6 terabytes by the end of 2010, which is torrential given today’s meager satellite trickle. Add in O3b Network’s proposed offerings and you’ve got some serious LAN-gaming geekery in East Africa’s future, or least the ability to have a connection able to handle a live uplink. 

What does this mean for the African Diaspora you ask? For starters, it means cheaper international commications. Instead of the Diaspora making the calls, there will be many more phone calls coming out of Africa. Plus, given what I’ve seen emerging from MobileActive08 this past week, Africa is going to need a lot more bandwidth to handle all of these new mobile apps being developed for African NGOs and telco customers. Cheaper backhaul also means, cheaper, faster access to information in educational institutions,. Don’t forget about the ability to roll out tech-heavy call centers, and telemedicine initiatives sitting on Africa’s horizon. Let’s hope everything goes as planned and Africa finally hops aboard the high speed information super highway.