60ms cross continent

Wed Jul 8 13:21:14 UTC 2020

When we started TICSA (Internet Africa/Verizon/whatever), we went with a 9600 bps satellite link to New Jersey specifically because the SAT-2 fibre had just been installed and traffic was being moved off satellite.  The satellite folk were getting *very* nervous, and gave us a heavily discounted service provided we had a 5-year contract that specified that they service *had* to run over satellite.  Job insurance.

As our requirements grew, we added fibre connections.  Eventually the telco canceled the satellite connection as they were starting to focus on VSAT.

	paul

> On Jul 8, 2020, at 3:05 AM, Mark Tinka <mark.tinka at seacom.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/Jul/20 21:58, Eric Kuhnke wrote:
>> Watching the growth of terrestrial fiber (and PTP microwave) networks
>> going inland from the west and east African coasts has been
>> interesting. There's a big old C-band earth station on the hill above
>> Freetown, Sierra Leone that was previously the capital's only link to
>> the outside world. Obsoleted for some years now thanks to the
>> submarine cable and landing station. I imagine they might keep things
>> live as a backup path with a small C-band transponder MHz commit and
>> SCPC modems linked to an earth station somewhere in Europe, but not
>> with very much capacity or monthly cost.
>> 
>> The landing station in Mogadishu had a similar effect.
> 
> The early years of submarine fibre in Africa always had satellite as a
> backup. In fact, many satellite companies that served Africa with
> Internet prior to submarine fibre were banking on subsea and terrestrial
> failures to remain relevant. It worked between 2009 - 2013, when
> terrestrial builds and operation had plenty of teething problems. Those
> companies have since either disappeared or moved their services over to
> fibre as well.
> 
> In that time, it has simply become impossible to have any backup
> capacity on satellite anymore. There is too much active fibre bandwidth
> being carried around and out of/into Africa for any satellite system to
> make sense. Rather, diversifying terrestrial and submarine capacity is
> the answer, and that is growing quite well.
> 
> Plenty of new cable systems that are launching this year, next year and
> the next 3 years. At the moment, one would say there is sufficient
> submarine capacity to keep the continent going in case of a major subsea
> cut (like we saw in January when both the WACS and SAT-3 cables got cut
> at the same time, and were out for over a month).
> 
> Satellite earth stations are not irrelevant, however. They still do get
> used to provide satellite-based TV services, and can also be used for
> media houses who need to hook up to their network to broadcast video
> when reporting in the region (even though uploading a raw file back home
> over the Internet is where the tech. has now gone).
> 
> Mark.
> 