IP solutions provider Global Crossing has announced new partnerships with both West and East African undersea cable operators.
The largest shareholder in the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy), the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC), and the Main One Cable Company have both interconnected their networks with Global Crossing.
The two partnerships announcements are, however, unrelated and are not indicative of any tie-up between WIOCC and Main One.
WIOCC has a 30% stake in Eassy, the 10 000km, 4.72Tbps subsea fibre-optic cable that runs along the east coast of Africa. Main One was the first submarine cable company offering open access, wholesale broadband capacity in West Africa.
The new agreement is said to enable both Main One and WIOCC to become part of the Global Crossing Tier 1 Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) network.
Global Crossing reaches 700 cities across 70 countries in North America, Latin America and Europe.
Apart from extending connectivity, the relationships will increase flexibility and provide significantly reduced transit charges for customer terminations for both WIOCC and Main One.
End-to-end service
"This strategic relationship with Global Crossing, with its comprehensive global network reach, significantly improves our ability to deliver end-to-end service to WIOCC customers in Africa and the rest of the world,” says WIOCC CEO Chris Wood.
“We already offer the only direct fibre-optic route between East Africa and Europe, and with this new agreement in place, we now have the capability to extend our reach to even more points on the globe.”
According to Main One's head of marketing and strategy, Adebayo Oyewole: “We chose Global Crossing for its particular regional strengths. Our partnership with Global Crossing enhances Main One's position as the one-stop shop for accessing the public Internet via the Main One network, which is designed for high-capacity service.”
“The new product portfolio enables Main One to deliver a wide range of connectivity options to geographically dispersed locations, while reducing customers' costs by converging previously disparate data, voice and video networks.”
Global Crossing head of carrier sales for South Europe, Middle East and Africa, Habib Issa, adds: "Eassy represents the majority of the international capacity available on Africa's east coast. WIOCC has unparalleled reach throughout eastern and southern Africa, and will play an important role in improving Internet connectivity throughout this region.”
Commenting on the Main One partnership, Issa says: “We're very pleased to join with Main One in offering its customers global access and IP-based solutions.
Global benefits
WIOCC says the new partnership will benefit African telcos and ISPs. “International carriers looking for better connectivity into Africa can now take advantage of Global Crossing's network as a convenient mechanism for exchanging traffic directly with eastern and southern Africa using the WIOCC-Eassy cable and network.”
WIOCC is jointly owned by 14 African telecoms operators, and the Eassy cable is the second undersea cable to operate all the way down the African East Coast (Seacom was the first).
Seacom is privately-funded and operated, and is - strictly speaking - not a telecommunications operator, but rather an “ICT enabler”.
Main One and Seacom have recently interconnected their West and East African cable systems to provide Pan-African capacity.
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