Fibre backbone cables for Africa

From MyBroadband

Fibre backbone cables spreading across the continent should lead to cheaper traffic between countries

With the arrival of six international fibre cables over the next two years, the race is on to provide national fibre backbones and competitive connections between countries. There have been for announcements this week that show that the arrival of these international cables has sparked a wave of fibre build-outs. These new routes should lead to both cheaper national backhaul rates and the switching of inter-country traffic from international to regional routings.

The next few years will be exciting as South Africa gets more international bandwidth. I don't think prices will come down as fast as people hope because international bandwidth costs are only one part of what makes up an Internet access product, but it should drive competition and hence meaningful price improvements across the board.