| The EASSY (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System) is expected to be ready for service in 2006, completing a fibre ring around Africa and providing the first undersea fiber links to Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, and Somalia. EASSY will be 8,840km and connect via branching units: Mtunzini (South Africa), Maputo (Mozambique), Mahajanga (Madagasgar), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Mombasa (Kenya), Mogadishu (Somalia) and Djibouti. EASSY will interconnect with Sea-Me-We 3 in Djibouti. Each country will be responsible for building its landing site and terrestrial fibre. The cable will be a two-fibre pair system configured as a collapsed ring. The proposed ultimate capacity per fibre pair is 16 or 32 wavelengths at 10Gbit/s. The project is supported by the G7 countries (UK, Japan, Italy, Canada, France, Germany, United States). Funding could come from the World Bank.
In addition, a number of terrestrial projects are being developed in countries along the EASSY route. For example, in Kenya, a 600km OPGW network is being installed on the power grid from Mombasa (a planned landing site) to Nairobi. Another fibre optic network has been planned between the two cities along an oil pipeline. Fibre is also being installed along railways. A project in Tanzania, will connect Dar es Salam (the planned EASSY landing site) to Mwanza along a 1,200km railway route.
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