Marine survey completed for East Africa's DARE1 subsea cable

The marine survey for the Djibouti Africa Regional Express 1 (DARE1) submarine cable system is complete and the cable route has been finalized.

The DARE1 cable system will connect Djibouti (Djibouti), Bosaso (Somalia), Mogadishu (Somalia) and Mombasa (Kenya). The finalized route has a length of 4,747km. The stated design capacity is 36 Tbps. The project is led by Djibouti Telecom and Somtel.  Subcom is the contractor.

Manufacturing of the undersea cables and repeaters will begin in April 2019 and the system will be ready for commercial traffic in June 2020.

“We are excited about the completion of the marine survey and the additional landing point for DARE1. We believe this cable system is crucial for the development of the East African region and we are impressed by SubCom’s level of dedication and professional project management. We look forward to expanding DARE1 into other regions and connecting it with other cables to increase accessibility in Africa and across the globe,” said M Mohamed Assoweh Bouh, Djibouti Telecom Director General.

“We are pleased with the progress of the project and the diligence of all parties to mitigate risk and keep the project on schedule,” said Debra Brask, VP Project Management at SubCom. “We continue to focus on furthering connectivity in the East Africa region and are enthusiastic about building on our successful record there by working on projects such as the DARE1 cable system.”