In a development expected to hike internet speeds and sink costs in Africa's biggest economy, another undersea fibre-optic cable running along the coast of east Africa was expected to reach

South Africa over the weekend.

In a statement released by telecommunications provider Telkom, the landing partner for the cable in South Africa, that the East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) would land in

northern KwaZulu-Natal province, on the south-east tip of the continent.

Mozambique, the northern tip of Sudan has already received the 10,000-kilometre cable. Djibouti, Somalia, Kenya, Tanzania, Comoros and Madagascar are also lined up to receive the cable,

which will also service landlocked countries through hook-ups.

With a capacity of 1.4 terabits per second, EASSy  has capacity higher than any other undersea cable system servicing East Africa, Telkom said.

In July last year, Seacom, a majority African-owned company, went live with the first such East Africa cable, linking southern, east and north Africa to India and Europe along a 17,000-

Kilometer  route.

 Telkom’s 'high-speed' ADSL line was beaten last year by an 11-month-old homing pigeon on the delivery of four gigabytes of data over 85 kilometers, causing embarrassment to company.

Alphonzo Samuels, Telkom's Wholesale Services manager said,“ Ultimately, we believe that EASSy will also go a long way towards increasing Africa's bandwidth capacity, affordability and

create increased diversity and fiber redundancy between SA and Europe as well as within East Africa.”

Excluding Seacom, Telkom says it also had stakes in a number of undersea cables.

EASSy is not actually expected to go live in South Africa until August - after the football World Cup.

“Internet penetration is only 5.6 per cent in Africa as compared to 26.6 per cent in the rest of the world,” Internet World Stats website said. (With Input from Agencies)