Undersea cables: total capacity vs. capacity in use

Since then, several more cables have been announced, this time connecting Africa to South America, and potentially doubling the already unprecedented capacity available. "Is that enough capacity for you?" Goldstuck asks - and answers that this impressive infrastructure will not take Africa into a new era of connectivity, nor of unlimited access and capacity.

"To start with," he says, "total capacity should not be confused with capacity in use [...] at this stage, well under 1Tb of the potential 22Tb capacity serving Sub-Saharan Africa is in use." The real benefits of this massive capacity do not lie in the capacity itself, Goldstuck says, but in the fact that it provides competition, which in turn forces down prices; it provides redundancy, which means we are not at the mercy of the elements or criminal activity when one line breaks; it improves latency, which means less of a signal delay for applications that need instant interactivity; and it entirely removes the traditional bottleneck of lack of international options.

Read the full article on www.gadget.co.za.