Seychelles: Connected: 2012-Making history |02 June 2012
As the Beau Vallon school children sung the chorus of Francois Havelock’s Bose bose menm and the sound of the traditional lansiv echoed across the Beau Vallon beach, our President stood alongside key players in the realisation of the Seychelles East Africa System (SEAS) project to symbolically pull the cable that will connect Seychelles to the rest of the world in ways never seen before!
With this gesture the Seychelles Cable Systems Ltd (SCS) made history, on that day. May 27, 2012 will indeed go down as the day when “history was made” in Seychelles and the parties within SCS that had spent the past few years working on the SEAS project had every reason to be proud of their accomplishment.
“It is a special moment which has the potential for transforming our economy and our way of life for the better,” said President Michel, adding that it is a milestone in our country’s proud history as an independent nation in the global communication village.
The SCS is a private-public partnership undertaking made up of Airtel, Cable and Wireless Seychelles and the Seychelles Government. Led by Benjamin Choppy as its chairman, its other members are chief executive Charles Hammond of CWS, Tsiresy Randriamamiona, the managing director of Airtel, and SCS company secretary Bertrand Belle.
“This is a striking example of successful public-private sector partnership, which is a model for sound economic development,” said President Michel, referring to SCS and the other partners such as Alcatel-Lucent and Zantel who have been involved in the project.
Not to be forgotten are the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank who have given their financial support for the project and all those local companies and individuals who had believed in SCS from the conception of the project. It is for this reason that representatives of the two financial institutions (EIB and ADB) were in the lineup for the symbolic cable pulling.
To ensure that the future generations remember that day, four students from the Beau Vallon primary and secondary schools were also chosen to join in the lineup for the cable pulling. They represent the generations who will reap the full benefits of the project; especially so when they come of age to start playing their role in the development of the country as working citizens.
A significant crowd of people had gathered at the Beau Vallon beach for that historic moment.
Even more tuned in their radios listening to live reports by the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation as the red buoys were released from Alcatel Lucent’s Ile de Sein and the fibre-optic cable, making the last part of its 2,000-kilometre journey from the Msasani Beach in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania to land on the Beau Vallon beach next to La Plage and the Boat House restaurants at around 11am.
The Beau Vallon community had not been left out. The district’s member of the National Assembly Mirena Souris was among the invited guests for the event. It was also one of their own, popular Sega singer Francois Havelock who had the honour of blowing the lansiv – in yesteryears normally associated with a catch being landed. On the day, it symbolised the arrival of the two commemorative buoys on the shore. Yellow in color, the first two buoys to reach the shore displayed the SEAS logo and it is planned that one will be donated and kept in a museum as a record of this event.
Once the cable had been pulled, President Michel had the honour of signing his name first on both buoys and also, recorded the historical date of the landing on it. He was followed by Vice-President Danny Faure – who holds the portfolio for Information Technology and Communications, the Minister for Natural Resources and Industry Peter Sinon and the Seychelles honorary consul in Tanzania Maryvonne Pool. The board members of SCS led by Mr Choppy then each took turns to put their signatures on the two very important historical pieces.
Three people in the lineup were part of both part of the journey with the cable from Tanzania. Mr Sinon, Mr Choppy and Ms Pool were present on Msasani beach earlier this month when the first part of the cable was linked to the beach manhole in Tanzania and on Sunday they completed the task at Beau Vallon.
There is no denying that we have indeed come a long way since the first telegraph cable was laid some 120 years ago between Zanzibar and Seychelles.
Mr Michel also described the Seychelles East Africa System project as another great “first” for the New Seychelles, and a product of the hard work of our IT engineers and their international partners.
“We need to work hard to empower ourselves with the new IT tools that this broadband project offers. We need to develop the technical expertise of our business and public services professionals, as well as training young people and encouraging them take up careers in the IT sector,” he said.
If credit is to be given where it is due then the consensus out there is that Mr Choppy who is also principal secretary for Information Technology and Communications deserves to be commended for his remarkable leadership role in the realisation of the project.
To borrow some words from Vice-President Faure’s speech at a reception held at Le Meridien Fishermen’s Cove to thank those involved in the project:
“We have to show appreciation and give recognition to some individuals who have remained committed to this project and seen it through from its very inception, when it was very much a dream on a drawing board”.
VP Faure noted that Mr Choppy has very much been the public face of the project.
As chief technician in the IT domain for several years, Mr Choppy has been instrumental in conceiving the project and seeing it through to actual implementation.
“We take off our hat to you Ben for a job well done. You have shown real Seychellois tenacity,” he said.
The cable has landed, Ile de Sein is gone, now it remains to be seen what Cable and Wireless and Airtel have in store for us. The President has given them and other service providers the great challenge of delivering faster internet services to our homes and workplaces.
We all agree with him that as a nation which needs to remain connected, we naturally have great expectations from the internet service providers to deliver the new and improved services and affordable outreach as a result of this cable connection.
Contributed by Seychelles Cable Systems (SCS) Co Ltd
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Cable and Wireless happy to have been there always
The history of telecommunications in Seychelles started back in the year 1893 when the Eastern and Southern African Telegraph Company was formed and successfully linked Seychelles and Tanzania through a telegraph cable.
The cable had the capacity for telegraphic transfer of only 15 words per minute and was Seychelles’ only conduit to the worldwide telecommunication network.
Having pioneered Seychelles Telecommunication 119 years ago, Cable & Wireless (Seychelles) Ltd has once again played an instrumental role in the realisation of the Seychelles’ first fibre optic submarine cable.
“The landing of SEAS on Seychelles’ shore is indeed more than another milestone in development of ICT in Seychelles, and I am pleased to lead my peers at CWS in being part of history. Such achievement will change the way we live and CWS will continue to support and provide Seychelles with services gearing towards great customer experience,” said Charles Hammond – chief executive CWS.
With the arrival of SEAS, CWS is ready to provide better, innovative services and improved customer experience once SEAS is commercialised. The recent commissioning of CWS’ brand new 3G+ mobile network and a modernised Fibre to the Curb (‘FTTC’) line plant network emphatically demonstrates the company’s commitment, vision and dedication to continuously investment to raise customer experience. We are now in a new wave of technology leap, with IP clouds and datacenter technologies. With each new technology wave, users of services multiply and new business and service models are required to improve customer experience. CWS is now looking forward to the introduction of telecommunications services that will enable its customers to work, play and have fun whenever it suit customers’ needs and wherever our customers are.
Contributed by Cable and Wireless
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Airtel - Proud to be part of it all
Bharti Airtel is the fifth largest mobile company in the world with operations in 19 countries across Asia and Africa and close to 250 million customers.
Airtel Seychelles – part of the Airtel Africa division – launched its mobile services in Seychelles in December 1998, and over the years deployed Fixed Line services in some parts of Mahé. After launching the first 3G network in Seychelles in 2006, Airtel also took the leap forward in 2011 to aim to become a fully-fledged Internet Service Provider.
Over the years, taking into consideration Seychelles remoteness to the rest of the world, discussions into Seychelles acquiring its own submarine fibre optic gained momentum. Investing in the fibre optic cable project in a private-public partnership was of major interest to the Airtel Group.
Says Airtel Seychelles managing director Tsiresy Randriamampionona:
“ I believe that telecommunication technology transformation is a key enabler for the development of Seychelles and that its future resides in its capacity to embrace the digital revolution. By bringing more data capacity it will develop data capabilities in Seychelles and more access to information and to businesses.”
It would help minimise the dependence on the use of expensive bandwidth through satellite links.
But most importantly, it will bring technology to a higher level, reveal different opportunities and a whole range of fresh business activities to transform our economy and open avenues to the world.
And practically for the customers, in the long run, it will mean much faster internet speed at lower rates and with more services.
Contributed by Airtel