The 34,000 km cable, which would be the first of its kind to link Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is expected to come online by the end of 2014, said Andrew Mthembu, chairman of technology group i3 Africa which is promoting the project.
"I'm hoping within the coming six months we will all be
in a position to get all the consortium members into some sort of
agreement, and then from there it's then a 24 month period for
manufacture and installation," he said on the sidelines of a
telecommunications conference.
The cable, first proposed in May last year, would also connect with existing undersea cables, opening access to 21 African countries, Mthembu said.
Africa is currently connected to Europe, North America
and Asia through nine undersea cables, with five more submarine links
planned by 2014, South Africa's communication minister Dina Pule told
the conference."All of these cable connections should help improve the connection to our new trade partners, reduce the cost to communicate and improve the quality of the Internet services," she said.
Although Internet penetration in Africa
has grown to 12.8 percent in 2010 from 2.4 percent in 2006, four-fifths
of the continent's one billion population still has no access to it,
officials said.
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