Portions of the highly anticipated Seacom deepwater fibre-optics cable, which will link South Africa with Europe and India, were now resting on the seabed of the Indian Ocean, and the Red Sea.

“The cable has been laid from the edge of the South African waters to Mozambique, and cable laying is also proceeding in the Red Sea from Egypt towards the coast of Yemen,” Seacom reported on Wednesday.

A third ship was currently being loaded with the remainder of Seacom’s deepwater cable, which would be deployed from India towards Africa, where these three cable segments would be joined.

“We are delighted to have actual cable in the water and the count-down to June has begun. We have made tremendous progress since our groundbreaking in Mozambique last November and we can now sense a real level of excitement for Seacom’s arrival,” commented Seacom president Brian Herlihy.

In parallel to the marine installation, Seacom was also busy with land-based construction.

“The high-performance optical transmission equipment, which connects customers to inland terrestrial networks, has been installed in the Maputo, Mumbai and Djibouti cable landing stations. Construction of the cable station in Kenya will be complete in early February, followed shortly by the Tanzanian and South African stations,” the company said.

Equipment installation in these locations, and in Egypt, would be complete in April, added Seacom.

At each site, Seacom has taken special precautions to assure the construction activity is consistent with environmental policy and regulations. In particular, in South Africa, Seacom recently transferred protected plant species from the cable station site to the Umlalazi National Park, with the help of the KwaZulu-Natal Wildlife rangers.

Seacom noted that it has also been preparing to provide services to customers by June this year, and has recruited more than ten experienced local telecommunications professionals from India, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania, to operate and maintain the cable stations.

Many of these personnel have already been trained at the Seacom Network Operations Centre in India, and were now participating in the testing of the system, as it was being installed.

A complementary set of personnel, who would also work with the landing partners’ operators in Egypt and Djibouti, was being recruited and would start training in March.

“Seacom is pleased to have been able to tap into the huge resource of talented young African telecommunication professionals, who are now ready to provide customers with the required support from June onwards,” the company stated.

“I am pleased with our recruitment successes and the fact that Seacom was able to source the necessary skills to operate the cable from African talent. We are inundated with highly qualified candidates and hiring almost all of our employees from African labour pools,” added Herlihy.

Telecommunications industry players in South Africa keenly await June 2009, when the under-water cable was expected to become operational, and when southern and eastern Africa would become truly connected to international broadband networks.

Plentiful and readily available bandwidth was expected to result in lower telecommunications costs and new opportunities across many sectors, including the call center and business process outsourcing industries. Other life-enhancing disciplines such as educational, clinical and scientific research, which rely on the real-time sharing of data around the world, would also become a reality for many African organisations.

“Through my travels, I continuously meet people who speak about the many ways they intend to exploit the world of broadband which is about to reach Africa,” Herlihy concluded.