10,000 km Submarine Network for Africa

The East Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) consortium has signed a turnkey contract with Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) to lay the first ever optical submarine cable network landing in East Africa. Based on Alcatel-Lucent’s submarine and terrestrial optical solutions, EASSy will provide connectivity across the continent to support the increase in local traffic from both traditional and new broadband services. Additionally, with interconnection to other submarine cable systems to the North and South, this project will provide an international gateway, crucial for the economic development of the region.

With completion scheduled by the end of 2008, the EASSy submarine network will deliver a regional capacity of 320 Gbit/s. Governments, public administrations and businesses will leverage advanced technology to support new applications such as remote medical diagnosis and international call centers. Consumers will benefit from accessible and affordable broadband Internet.

The EASSy submarine network will span nearly 10,000 km linking eight countries from Sudan to South Africa, via Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mozambique. Landings will be located in Port Sudan (Sudan), Djibouti (Djibouti), Mogadishu (Somalia), Mombasa (Kenya), Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), Toliary (Madagascar), Maputo (Mozambique) and Mtunzini (South Africa). By interconnecting with Sea-Me-We 3, Sea-Me-We 4, SAS1, Falcon and SAT3/ WASC /SAFE, the EASSy submarine cable system will also serve as a supporting infrastructure for these networks. Saudi Telecom Co. (STC) and Emirates Telecommunication Corporation (Etisalat) are members in the Sea-Me-We Consortium and in Saudi Arabia, Sea-Me-We has a landing at Jeddah.

Tax Accountants Invade the Virtual World

US Tax Preparation firm H&R Block has launched H&R Block Island, a new destination for the thousands of people who spend more than seven million hours per month in Linden Lab’s 3D online world, Second Life. Through their new virtual office, H&R Block’s digital tax professionals will share free advice, provide access to the latest tax preparation products and host tax-related events.

Anyone who logs in and creates a free basic membership at www.SecondLife.com is able to visit H&R Block Island by using the text “HR Block” in Second Life’s map system and teleporting to the island. A variety of virtual scooters are available to tour H&R Block Island or virtual dancing shoes may be donned that allow users to do a tango-style dance when worn. Tango is H&R Block’s new tax preparation product.

Through the Second Life H&R Block tax experience, real life tax professionals are available in avatar form to answer tax-related questions free of charge. H&R Block’s virtual tax adviser avatars are named Hope Bechir and Rex Philbin. Hope and Rex will hold office hours in Second Life from 6-7 p.m. PDT on Tuesdays and Thursdays through April 17, 2007.

IT to Play Greater Role in Arab Banks

The 3rd Financial Technology (FT) Summit & Exhibition 2007, organized by the World Development Forum on April 23-25, 2007 at the JW Marriot Hotel in Dubai, will focus on the latest IT strategies of top Arab banks, plus the implications of new regulations from Central Banks. Having already spent $1.3 billion last year on technology, it seems that IT will play an even greater role in the way banks service their customers.

“Banking needs to speed up its services in terms of transfer and clearance to be more instantaneous,” commented Jocelyn Al-Adwani, deputy CEO/CTO at STME. “Technology enables us to have instant gratification. However, if we want to make payments, deposit checks or transfer money, the banks are still holding this for a number of days, which is no longer necessary but obviously income generating for the financial institutions. There are some central banks in the region who are bringing in regulations to force instant transfer and check clearance to the benefit of customers.”

Tough Competition for European IT Prizes

British, Swedish and Austrian firms have become the Grand Prize winners of the European ICT Prize, the EU’s own “Nobel Prize” for innovation in information and communication technologies. The Grand Prizes were worth 200,000 euros each. Seventeen more prizes, of 5,000 euros each, were awarded to other ground-breaking technologies. The 20 prize winners were selected by the European Commission from a record number of 450 applicants, from 30 countries.

The three Grand Prize winners, of equal merit, were:

• Telepo’s Business Communication Solution for extending advanced voice and messaging for the mobile work force by integrating mobile and fixed-line communications.

• Transitive Corporation’s QuickTransit for software translation without source code or binary code changes.

• Treventus Mechatronics’ ScanRobot for lowering costs and increasing speed for digital library creation through automatic distortion-free book scanning — approximately 25 pages per minute.

Batelco Buys Stake in Yemen Telco

Bahrain’s Batelco is purchasing a 20 percent shareholding in Yemen’s SabaFon, for $144 million in cash. Batelco is purchasing this share directly from Shaikh Hameed Al-Ahmar, SabaFon’s largest shareholder and chairman. The Al-Ahmar Group will remain SabaFon’s largest single shareholder.

“Batelco has developed and is executing a niche growth strategy in the Middle East by focusing in areas of substantial growth from broadband and mobile operations,” explained Batelco Chairman Shaikh Hamad bin Abdulla Al-Khalifa.

SabaFon is the largest GSM operator in Yemen offering national coverage with over 500 base stations across Yemen and 1.2 million mobile subscribers at the end of February. It has approximately 40 percent of the Yemeni mobile market. Yemen had a population of over 22 million and approximately 12 percent mobile market penetration as of January.

Batelco was advised in the acquisition by Millennium Finance Corporation which commented that partnering with SabaFon will accelerate Batelco’s earnings and provide the potential to further enhance revenue growth plus create substantial value for Batelco’s shareholders.