On Monday, WIOCC’s CEO Chris Wood announced completion of the EASSY submarine cable, of which WIOCC is the largest investor, for the end of June 2010. After much delay due to shareholding structure divergences, the much awaited infrastructure  will bring 1.4 Tbps in additional capacity to the African East coast. The cable owned by 16 different investors aims to provide fast and reliable international bandwidth access to 10 countries including Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.  Only the coastal countries will initially benefit from access to the cable while inland international terrestrial links are built. The cable is bound to compete in the mid to long term with Seacom’s cable which already offers a capacity 1.2 Tbps to South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya. The implications of the arrival of EASSY are multiple for Africa’s eastern markets.

On March 11, MTN reported its results for the year ended on the December 31, 2009. With group revenues up by 9.2%, organic customer growth at 28% and group EBITDA margin above the 40% landmark, MTN shows notable resiliency in the face of a global economic slowdown and an operating environment that has become much tougher.

On February 13, Zain’s board accepted a $10.7bn offer for its African assets from India’s leading carrier Bharti, including $1.7bn in debt. The deal is expected to close within a month, the time for Bharti to close out the financing of the transaction; at first blush, this appears to be that rare transaction that works for all parties, though perhaps not as well for Bharti’s shareholders. (Please click title – Full Analysis in PDF available at www.africanext.com)