East Africa will have to wait a little longer to be connected to the global broadband network due to pirate attacks off the Horn of Africa and Somalia that have delayed the laying of the undersea cable there.
The connection to the global broadband network was supposed to have taken place by the end of this month but on Wednesday the managers of Seacom, a $600 million project owned by private investors, said that its cable would not come into service until July 23 – nearly a month later than planned – due to piracy off the coast of Somalia that had delayed the work of its cable-laying contractor.
Tyco Telecommunications, the contractor, was at one point forced to suspend its cable-laying around the Horn of Africa so it could revise its security arrangements following the latest surge in piracy, the Financial Times reported.
Piracy from Somalia has been on the rise since last August, but last week’s announcement from Seacom marked the first time the pirates have disrupted efforts to end the region’s dependence on satellite Internet links, which are slow, unreliable and often prohibitively expensive.
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