The US$600 million cable was expected to largely draw demand for bandwidth from South Africa, with less interest coming from the rest of the eastern and southern Africa region, said Seacom CEO Brian Herlihy.
"We have found out that there is a lot of demand coming from East Africa and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) region," Herlihy said at a meeting to update stakeholders on the progress of the cable.
The Seacom cable lands in June, ahead of the East African Marine System (TEAMS) cable, while the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSY) has been pushed to June 2010.
Herlihy also touched on Seacom's pricing structure, saying the company will give retailers open access to cheaper bandwidth.
Seacom's business philosophy, he said, will be low-cost, high-volume supply of bandwidth.
The Seacom project is banking on large market demand initially, with incremental capacity being bought in the future, Herlihy said.
To purchase capacity from Seacom, companies can either use an IRU (Indefeasible Right of Use), or lease capacity. An IRU is an up-front direct payment for various increments of bandwidth, from an STM1, the standard telecommunications unit for a 155M bps line, up through an STM64, which provides 10G bps.
Under this arrangement, the purchaser owns the allocated capacity for 20 years and can resell it to whoever they want. Operators will pay US$3.5 million for an STM1, $11.6 million for an STM4 and $34.7 million for an STM16.
Currently, an STM1 lease from a satellite broadband provider costs $387,500 per month. Over 20 years, this amounts to $93 million.
The second arrangement, through lease, is more expensive. Seacom will allow small ISPs to group together to buy capacity.
Herlihy said Seacom has created an artificial ceiling that will work well to prevent wholesalers from charging the end-user high bandwidth fees.
Today, supply of bandwidth is constricted -- a factor that explains the slow Internet speeds and high prices, but Seacom expects ISPs to buy more bandwidth given prices will be reduced by about 80 percent from what a megabit costs today.
Today, Uganda uses between 400M bps to 600M bps of bandwidth but according to Herlihy, when Seacom launches, the Ugandan market will use between 2G bps to 3G bps of bandwidth. Seacom will provide some 80GB (10 percent of the cable's capacity) initially, which is expected to be sufficient.
Africa, like the rest of the world, is experiencing enormous growth in capacity demand due to the Internet's ability as a medium for communication, providing information and entertainment.
"In the rest of the world, bandwidth demand is undergoing exponential growth due to transmission of video and end user derived content and this will soon be the case in Africa," Herlihy said.
Seacom has secured backhaul capacity through Kenya Data Networks (KDN) and its Uganda partner, Infocom, to be able to go live in Uganda and Rwanda on launch date.
"As we speak, the link between Kampala and Mombasa (1,250 km) at the Kenyan coast is in place through our partnership with KDN and its Ugandan partner," Herlihy said. Seacom plans to build landing stations in Kampala and Kigali, Rwanda.
Herlihy said capacity will be carried to Rwanda via microwave link but that Seacom is interested in entering a capacity agreement with any one of the telcos in Uganda and Rwanda building a terrestrial fiber-optic cable.
Seacom has finished work on all its cable landing stations and the ships are now motoring down the Indian Ocean burying the cable.