The East African Submarine Cable System (EASSy) is an initiative to construct and operate a submarine fiber optic cable along the east coast of Africa to connect eight coastal countries and island nations to each other and to the rest of the world (the Project). The cable will have an initial equipped capacity of 20Gbits/sec, and an ultimate capacity when fully upgraded of 320Gbits/sec. The route will be from South Africa to Sudan, covering about 8,500 km, and connecting the following countries: South Africa, Mozambique, Madagascar, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan. Twenty-eight leading telecommunications operators (the Operators) from East and Southern Africa signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) in December 2003 to carry out the construction and maintenance of EASSy. EASSy will be the first optical fiber connection for most of these countries to the global optical fiber network. In separate projects, EASSy signatories are working on the development of terrestrial backhaul connections to link land-locked countries of the region to the cable (including Botswana, Burundi, Ethiopia, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe).