Nairobi — The East African Marine Systems (Teams) cable is to go live next week, Dr Bitange Ndemo, permanent secretary ministry of Information and Communication has said.

The launch of the system, which could drive bandwidth prices down due to competition among shareholders was to have taken place on Friday but did not materialise.

Dr Ndemo had earlier on Friday morning confirmed that the cable was to be launched by President Mwai Kibaki, but later said it had been put off.

"We were unable to go ahead with the launch as the President was taking part in an event to raise funds for the Faza Island fire victims," he told Saturday Nation.

As soon as the cable is handed over to Teams by the contractors, connectivity will be activated and it will then be up to each investor to decide the pricing and timing of the launch of their individual bandwidth on the cable, Mr Michael Joseph, Teams chairman and CEO Safaricom said in reference to the competition among shareholders.

"Capacity will be sold by shareholders of the cable as licensed telecommunications operators. The shareholders are all competitors in the market place and this level of competitiveness will ensure the price of capacity at both the retail and wholesale levels will be more affordable than that currently being sold by competing cable systems," said Mr Joseph.

"The shareholding in Teams Ltd is directly proportional to the equivalent ownership of the cable system's share of capacity," he said.

The partnership between Tata Communications and AccessKenya Group to establish a local access point to the internet in Kenya is expected to benefit players as the cable goes live.

It will allow internet service providers to access a direct link between Kenya and other world destinations.

Earlier, service providers in the country needed to buy international fibre through a cable network to London to offer Internet links to Asia or South Africa. This meant that all traffic was routed through London rather than through a more direct route.

The internet protocol for this point of preference is configured to offer back up for internet traffic going north towards Europe and southwards to South Africa and to Asia and India over the Seacom cable system, the companies said.

Should there be a fibre cut on route to London, for example, traffic will be diverted through South Africa to ensure that customer services are not disrupted.