The massive 2Africa subsea cable, which will connect Africa, Europe and Asia, has landed on South African shores.
This marks another submarine internet cable landing on local shores in recent months.
Announced in May 2020, the 2Africa consortium is comprised of China Mobile International, Meta (Facebook), MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, STC, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.
It is designed to deliver international connectivity to approximately three billion people upon completion.
In a statement today,MTN SA and MTN GlobalConnect – the 2Africa landing partners – announced the landing of the 45 000km cable in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, Western Cape.
MTN GlobalConnect has partnered with MTN SA to complete the landing on South African soil, it states. In addition, the Yzerfontein landing will support the 2Africa West cable, and the MTN SA landing station in Duynefontein will support the 2Africa East cable.
For MTN GlobalConnect, this landing is the first in a series of six across five countries: SA (two), Sudan, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Ghana.
MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita says: “Strategic partnerships such as the one we have with the 2Africa consortium will help us accelerate and deepen internet adoption and socio-economic progress across the African continent.
“Data traffic across African markets is expected to grow between four- and five-fold over the next five years, so we need infrastructure and capacity to meet that level of growth and demand.”
With Africa currently being the least connected continent − with only a quarter of its 1.3 billion people with access to the internet − new cable systems like 2Africa and Google's Equiano are expected to bring international capacity to the continent’s shores.
The 2Africa subsea cable system will support the Western and Eastern sides of Africa once it is complete, notes the statement.
Once live, it’s expected to play a big part in delivering much-needed capacity in Africa from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
With a design capacity of up to 180Tbps on key parts of the system, the cable is intended to deliver much-needed internet capacity, reliability and improved internet performance across large parts of Africa, supplement the fast-growing capacity demand in the Middle East, and underpin the further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for millions of people.
For South African service providers, this means they can acquire capacity in carrier-neutral data centres, or open-access cable landing stations, on a fair and equitable basis, it states.
MTN GlobalConnect CEO Frédéric Schepens adds: “MTN GlobalConnect is pleased to participate in this bold 2Africa subsea cable project. The initiative complements our terrestrial fibre strategy to connect African countries to each other and to the rest of the world.
“We are building scale infrastructure assets to meet the explosive growth in data traffic and accelerate the digital economy on the continent, by creating a Pan-African fibre railroad driving affordable connectivity.
“We are proud of the progress made on our journey and of the key role we are playing in providing South Africans and the rest of Africa with the benefits of a modern connected life.”
The 2Africa landing on South African shores is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries.
The 2Africa undersea cable connection will go live in 2023.
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