of the shore-end of a modern submarine communications cable. 1 –
Polyethylene2 –
Mylar tape 3 – Stranded
steel wires4 –
Aluminium water barrier 5 –
Polycarbonate6 –
Copper or aluminium tube 7 –
Petroleum jelly8 –
Optical fibers Fibre-optic pairs are provided from Mtunzini to France to a point of presence (PoP) in
Marseille, as well as from Tanzania to India into a PoP in
Mumbai. SEACOM has also built an on-net European network, managed and operated by themselves, to deliver
transport layer,
internet protocol (IP), and
multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) services to the following cities in Europe: • Amsterdam, Netherlands • Frankfurt, Germany • London, United Kingdom • Marseille, France • Slough, United Kingdom Through third-party networks in Europe, SEACOM also delivers these services to other locations in Europe not covered in the list of cities above. The SEACOM cable is deployed with a mixture of double armour cable, single armour cable, special protection cable (with a metallic wrap below the insulator, rather than steel wires), and lightweight cable without armour, used in deep waters. Shallower water cable typically has more protective armour than offshore, deeper cable. The cable is a loose tube design that determines the amount and relative location along the transmission path of each type of fibre. Multiple fibre types are used in the cable:
dispersion-shifted and
non-zero dispersion-shifted. The repeaters are
optical amplifier repeaters, using
erbium-doped
amplifiers. There are over 150 repeaters in the SEACOM system. They are spaced along the cable many tens of kilometres apart with the distance between repeaters varying depending on the segment in the system. Repeater spacing is determined by a variety of factors, including the
transmission capacity of the fibres in the cable and the distance between
cable landing points. On 23 July 2009, the cable began operations, providing the eastern and southern African countries of Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and South Africa with high-speed Internet connectivity to Europe and Asia. The cable was officially switched on in simultaneous events held across the region, in
Mombasa, Kenya, and
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. On 4 August 2020, SEACOM announced that it would more than double the capacity on its fibre-optic network by the end of August 2020. The continent's first broadband submarine cable system operator will add 1.7 Tbit/s to its network, bringing its total capacity to 3.2 Tbit/s along Africa's eastern and Southern coasts. It has ownership of Africa’s most extensive ICT data infrastructure. ==Funding==