I really dig this map. When you say interactive what exactly do you want to do with it? I mean it looks really cool the way it is now. I guess if you allowed us to move it around it may not look so cool. However I await to see what you have planned. As I said SEACOM has completed the laying of the cable and TEAMS is more than halfway done. I think though SEACOM and EASSy would do well to connect directly with WACS to form the ring around Africa concept into reality. That way the entire African content would move seamlessly across without having to pass Europe or some other external place. 11.76Tb/s is amazing.
I only now noticed the buttons at the top. Would be nice to add data that pops up – not just the cable line. Any chance?
Steve Song
@guy Agreed. Pop-up data would be a big improvement. Working on it. Mouseovers on wiggly cable lines is a bit of a pain. Have succeeded in creating imagemaps from the Inkscape svg file but coordinates don’t match. Debugging…
Yes mouse overs are indeed good. I was just looking at the SEACOM site and another idea occured to me. Why dont you have something that tracks the cables development on the laying phase? For example we dont or rather I dont know how far GLO1, ACE, MainOne and WACS have gone in terms of the actual laying of the cable. If they havent started laying it maybe they could tell us if the cable is being built or whether they are just signing contracts or something. It would also be good if they gave a timeline as SEACOM has done of the scheduled dates of completion. Whereas some info is available in the blogosphere about TEAMS I have already written to them asking why they dont have a website. They do however give regular reports to the Kenyan press through the PS Dr. B. Ndemo or through Safaricom’s Michael Joseph. EASSy’s website doesn’t give much info on the development of the cable as such. Maybe the interactive plan you have could allow us to update info on how far the cables have progressed. By the way apologies for blogging on your blog. Said enough already.
Gustav
I love your work man. Outstanding stuff, thank you.
News update TEAMS is now complete. The cable will officially be launched tomorrow Friday 12 June 2009 by the Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and the Prime Minister Raila Odinga. It will however first commence with some testing before it officially lights up. It’s testing phase will however not be as long as that of SEACOM because it is less complex since it connects only two landing stations Fujairah [UAE] and Mombasa [Kenya]. This means that Kenya now has a combined bandwidth availability of 2.4Tb/s which should increase to 3.8Tb/s when EASSy makes landfall next year. I hear that another cable called FLAG is also in the works and will also connect East Africa with West Africa. South Africa is likely to be the biggest beneficiary of all the cable networks because they all will want to connect West Africa and East Africa via SA. Details however are sketchy at the moment. Do you know anything about this cable?
Steve Song
Well, there are official launches and there is lit fibre. 🙂 Still curious to see whether Teams or Seacom will be first to deliver service.
FLAG runs through the Mediterranean and comes down to Port Sudan. That would offer an East West Africa link
I’ll promote your map on our website. This is one of the success factors in order to boost local entrepreneurs that is Africa’s Potential real mission.
While living in Uganda, the lack of internet conncetion or I should rather say the lack of electricity is one major concern that potential entrepreneuers need in their job when it comes to communicate with the outside world.
If all the cables are set and connected to the coastal areas of the African continent, that in the future would meen that countries such Uganda would benefit from this, regardless who the internetsupplier would be.
I’ll will follow your blog from now on, that’s one thing that is for certain!
You probably know this but the PingER project can see hosts in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya connected up to the Terrestrial link rather than satellite. This is identified by the Round Trip Times (RTTs) dropping from satellite RTTs of > 450 ms to well under 450ms. AS far as I can tell these are all using the Seacom fibre. For more details see https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibre
I really dig this map. When you say interactive what exactly do you want to do with it? I mean it looks really cool the way it is now. I guess if you allowed us to move it around it may not look so cool. However I await to see what you have planned. As I said SEACOM has completed the laying of the cable and TEAMS is more than halfway done. I think though SEACOM and EASSy would do well to connect directly with WACS to form the ring around Africa concept into reality. That way the entire African content would move seamlessly across without having to pass Europe or some other external place. 11.76Tb/s is amazing.
Certainly in Firefox, there does not seem to be any interactivity. But looking forward to it!
I only now noticed the buttons at the top. Would be nice to add data that pops up – not just the cable line. Any chance?
@guy Agreed. Pop-up data would be a big improvement. Working on it. Mouseovers on wiggly cable lines is a bit of a pain. Have succeeded in creating imagemaps from the Inkscape svg file but coordinates don’t match. Debugging…
Yes mouse overs are indeed good. I was just looking at the SEACOM site and another idea occured to me. Why dont you have something that tracks the cables development on the laying phase? For example we dont or rather I dont know how far GLO1, ACE, MainOne and WACS have gone in terms of the actual laying of the cable. If they havent started laying it maybe they could tell us if the cable is being built or whether they are just signing contracts or something. It would also be good if they gave a timeline as SEACOM has done of the scheduled dates of completion. Whereas some info is available in the blogosphere about TEAMS I have already written to them asking why they dont have a website. They do however give regular reports to the Kenyan press through the PS Dr. B. Ndemo or through Safaricom’s Michael Joseph. EASSy’s website doesn’t give much info on the development of the cable as such. Maybe the interactive plan you have could allow us to update info on how far the cables have progressed. By the way apologies for blogging on your blog. Said enough already.
I love your work man. Outstanding stuff, thank you.
Hi Steve.
News update TEAMS is now complete. The cable will officially be launched tomorrow Friday 12 June 2009 by the Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and the Prime Minister Raila Odinga. It will however first commence with some testing before it officially lights up. It’s testing phase will however not be as long as that of SEACOM because it is less complex since it connects only two landing stations Fujairah [UAE] and Mombasa [Kenya]. This means that Kenya now has a combined bandwidth availability of 2.4Tb/s which should increase to 3.8Tb/s when EASSy makes landfall next year. I hear that another cable called FLAG is also in the works and will also connect East Africa with West Africa. South Africa is likely to be the biggest beneficiary of all the cable networks because they all will want to connect West Africa and East Africa via SA. Details however are sketchy at the moment. Do you know anything about this cable?
Well, there are official launches and there is lit fibre. 🙂 Still curious to see whether Teams or Seacom will be first to deliver service.
FLAG runs through the Mediterranean and comes down to Port Sudan. That would offer an East West Africa link
Outstanding Mr Song !!!
Keep up the great job!!
I’ll promote your map on our website. This is one of the success factors in order to boost local entrepreneurs that is Africa’s Potential real mission.
While living in Uganda, the lack of internet conncetion or I should rather say the lack of electricity is one major concern that potential entrepreneuers need in their job when it comes to communicate with the outside world.
If all the cables are set and connected to the coastal areas of the African continent, that in the future would meen that countries such Uganda would benefit from this, regardless who the internetsupplier would be.
I’ll will follow your blog from now on, that’s one thing that is for certain!
//
Emre Gürler
Africa’s Potential.
Pingback: Undersea Broadband Fiber Optic Cables To Africa « Crossed Crocodiles
You probably know this but the PingER project can see hosts in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya connected up to the Terrestrial link rather than satellite. This is identified by the Round Trip Times (RTTs) dropping from satellite RTTs of > 450 ms to well under 450ms. AS far as I can tell these are all using the Seacom fibre. For more details see https://confluence.slac.stanford.edu/display/IEPM/New+E.+Coast+of+Africa+Fibre