作者：2013年3月28日观察者网
在昨天的金砖国家领导人德班峰会上，各国明确将推进“金砖国家光缆”（BRICS Cable）计划。“金砖国家光缆”是直接连通5个金砖国家的海底光缆项目，将于2014年初开工，2015年中启用。这对于金砖国家间的网络安全，消除金砖国家在通信领域对发达国家的依赖有重要意义。
这是金砖国家最大的一项战略投资。南非媒体将其与筹建金砖五国开发银行，筹建金砖五国应急基金并列为本次峰会的三大成就。
目前，金砖国家间通过欧美的光缆枢纽相联系，不仅成本高昂，而且存在网络安全隐患。采用“金砖国家光缆”将节约40%的通信成本，保护信息不被拦截或窃听，推动技术共享，促进贸易和金融业务的开展。
海底光缆将以俄罗斯的符拉迪沃斯托克市为起点，途经中国汕头、新加坡、印度钦奈、毛里求斯、南非开普敦与Mtunzini、巴西福塔莱萨，最终到美国迈阿密。
其中还有一段支线通往非洲国家安哥拉。此外，金砖国家光缆还将与东非海底光缆系统(TEAMS)、东非海底电缆系统（EASSy）和西非光缆系统(WACS)相连。目前有21个非洲国家使用上述系统，金砖国家光缆建成后，这些非洲国家都能安全、廉价、迅捷地与金砖国家联系，大大加强金砖国家与非洲各国的合作与交往。而这正是本次金砖国家峰会的重要议题之一。
“金砖国家光缆”项目的最初发起者是南非的i3 Africa和Imphandze公司，Andrew Mthembu兼任两家公司总裁，他透露该项目将使南非成为金砖国家与非洲交往的窗口。南非在2011年3月提出建议，两家公司同时开始可行性研究，并在一年内完成。法国Alcatel公司也在同期完成了线路勘察。
在去年2012年3月的金砖国家第4次峰会上，各国就海底光缆建设达成一致，4月即启动项目。该项目总长3.4万千米，其中直接连通5个金砖国家的海底光缆长约2.4万千米。
目前尚未确定，是否利用现有的俄罗斯至中国和中国至新加坡的光缆来降低成本，根据不同的方案，建设金砖国家海底光缆的成本约为8亿至15亿美元。出于商业角度考虑，成本将由运营商和投资者分担。
新建的海底光缆将采用最新技术，传输速度为100Gbps，传输容量为12.8Tbps。
Andrew Mthembu还认为，未来的通信需求在很大程度上将由中国驱动，中国可能在2030年成为网络信息传递的最大目的地。因此，他非常看好“金砖国家光缆”的商业前景。
(综合BRICS Cable网、南非IOL网、business tech网、环球时报等)
The inside story of the $1,5bn Brics Cable
Andrew Mthembu, the man driving the giant new submarine telecommunications cable to connect the Brics countries, reckons the project makes sound financial sense. By Duncan McLeod.
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| Andrew Mthembu |
The Brics Cable, a superfast broadband submarine network that will extend from the east of Russia to the US via SA, and which will cost as much as US$1,5bn to construct, is already at an advanced stage of planning and should be ready by mid to late 2014, according to Andrew Mthembu, the SA businessman behind the project.
The 12,8Tbit/s system will be the first contiguous submarine cable linking all of the so-called Brics nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and SA) and a supply and construction agreement could be signed for the project as early as this year.
The Brics Cable will extend from Vladivostok in Russia, south through China and on to Singapore. A spur will be built to India, with the main cable extending further southwestward through Mauritius, on to SA (landing north of Cape Town), across the South Atlantic to Fortaleza in Brazil and then northward to Jacksonville in the US state of Florida.
Mthembu, a former deputy group CEO atVodacom and a former chairman of Broadband Infraco, was intimately involved in another recent submarine cable, the West African Cable System (Wacs), which will be launched officially next week at a ceremony in Cape Town. He hopes to take many of the learnings from Wacs — which was built, he says, in record time — and apply these to the Brics system.
SA, Mthembu explains, is at the forefront of the Brics Cable initiative and the project came about following suggestions at the March 2011 Brics summit in China that SA was punching above its weight as the smallest of the economies in the grouping. Questions were being asked about what value SA brought to the table. Mthembu put forward the idea of the cable system as a way of reducing reliance on links across Europe and the North Atlantic. The new system would provide a shorter, cheaper and potentially more secure route for traffic flowing between the Brics nations and the US.
Mthembu and his team contracted France’s Axiom and America’s Terabit Consulting to conduct a full feasibility study for the proposed project. They also asked Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks to investigate whether it made sense.
Axiom and Terabit then spent months analysing the business case, speaking to operators in the affected countries to ascertain their appetite for it as well as determining likely economic growth and conducting an analysis of likely network traffic and demand. Based on an 18-year lifespan and 20% annual price erosion, the consultants concluded the project could deliver an internal rate of return (IRR) of 24% assuming no debt was raised and an IRR of 38% with a 60-40 debt-to-equity split.
“That’s phenomenal,” Mthembu says, adding that demand will be driven to a large extent by China, which, he says, is likely to expand to become the leading destination for Internet traffic by about 2030.
“While the feasibility study was being done, I met with all the governments in the Brics countries, with their ministries of communications and foreign affairs as well as the Brics secretariats in all of these countries,” he says. “I have also been to see the individual operators and canvassed them and they have been very supportive.”
Invitations to express interest have now been issued to operators across the Brics nations and Mthembu says 60% of them have responded and not one of these responses has been negative.
To achieve its 12,8Tbit/s design capacity — that’s two-and-a-half times the capacity of Wacs — the Brics Cable will be a two-fibre-pair system using the latest 100Gbit/s per lambda optical technology. The project will cost between $1bn and $1,5bn, depending on the eventual route it takes and which countries it connects to along its 34 000km length.
The project will be based on a “consortium model”, similar to the one used for Wacs, where a dozen or so operators will provide equity financing to support it. The landing station is likely to be near to the Wacs facility at Yzerfontein north of Cape Town. It may even be located in the same building to facilitate easy interconnection with that system, Mthembu says.
A meeting will be called in the first week in June, probably either in SA or somewhere in the Middle East, to discuss the project further and to provide potential investors with a detailed plan so they can then conduct thorough due diligences of their own.
Once “tier-one” investors have signed irrevocable commitments to fund the project, a thorough route survey will be conducted and a construction and maintenance agreement drafted. This phase will probably take about six months, after which implementation will begin. If it goes quickly, there is the possibility that the cable will be ready for service in time for the 2014 soccer World Cup, though it’s more likely to come on stream only later that year, Mthembu says. —(c) 2012 NewsCentral Media
原文链接：http://www.techcentral.co.za/the-inside-story-of-the-15bn-brics-cable/31530/
Brics: a new south-south cable
by Rob Minto , Apr 16, 2012 THE FINANCIAL TIMES
The big news to come out of the Brics summit in New Delhi last month was the formal proposal for a Brics development bank. But another item may end up being of greater economic significance: the Brics Cable.
This isn’t some Wikileaks exposé. Rather, it’s a proposed new route for a huge undersea telecoms cable connecting Vladivostok to Miami via Shantou, Mumbai and Fortaleza, Brazil. At a length of 34,000km, the cable will be the third longest in the world. So why is it needed?
A quick glance at a map of existing undersea cables shows that for data to get from, say, China to Brazil, it must go along several different pipes. Most Brics traffic goes through hubs in Europe or the US, incurring costs and – cyber-consipracy theorists pay attention – the “risk of potential interception of critical financial and security information by non-Brics entities”, according to Brics Cable, the project’s backer.
In other words: We don’t want to pay you for using pipes where you can listen in.
So why then is the cable proposed to extend to the US? Andrew Mthembu, chairman of i3 Africa and Imphandze Investment who was the driver of the West African WACS cable, told beyondbrics that “you can’t just wish America away – if you take the US out of the picture, you take away traffic. And for a cable like this, you need traffic. The US is still a major economy for the Brics.”
In fact, Mthembu was surprised that he didn’t meet with much resistance to the idea of extending the cable to the US when discussing the plans in New Delhi. Commercial considerations are clearly more important than cutting America off.
Politics aside, what’s driving this plan is the role of South Africa in the Brics. The country has often been seen as punching above its weight, joining the club in 2010 as a far smaller economy that any of the other four Bric nations. To prove its worth, South Africa needs to put forward credible projects of strategic importance – and the Brics Cable fits the bill.
The cable will open up access to Africa for the Bric nations and other countries, connecting to the WACS cable and the EASSy cable on the east coast of the continent. It will also give African countries access the other way – improving technology sharing, trade and transactions. And in the middle of it all is South Africa, which can benefit as a gateway.
The planned completion date is late 2014 – it will take two years to manufacture, plan the route and lay the cable. The crucial bit is the agreements with operators and governments in all the connecting countries, which could take up to six months. Mthembu said the lesson of the WACS cable was that getting the permits was the hardest bit, with 12 participating countries, each with their own regimes and laws.
So what if, say, Indonesia wants to join? Easy enough, said Mthembu – a connecting extension can be put in without too much trouble. Getting the main section agreed is the hard bit.
Currently, Mthembu has support from governments and country telecoms operators alike. “We are optimistic,” he said, “but the proof will be in the eating.”
