The Equiano subsea Internet cable, which has been making its way around for a few months and has already landed in Togo and Nigeria, arrived in South Africa on Monday at Melkbosstrand, north of Cape Town. This is the final stop on the journey south for the 12-fibre-pair network that aims to drive down Internet rates in South Africa when it comes up over the next couple of months.
The Google-owned cable system has a design capacity of 144Tbit/s, making it the highest-capacity Internet cable to ever touch down on African soil. It connects South Africa with Portugal and then onto other underwater and terrestrial Internet systems. It also has places to land in Namibia and Nigeria, and it is the first cable to reach the remote island of St. Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.
The Equiano Cable Partners
In a statement released Monday, the African telecoms and data centre infrastructure business Wiocc (West Indian Ocean Cable Company) announced that Equiano had touched down at Melkbosstrand. WIOCC, which was initially established to become an investor in the Eassy system along the east coast of Africa, has access to its very own fibre pair in Equiano.
The cable “will have a direct impact on connectivity throughout the Southern Africa region, resulting in faster Internet speeds, reduced Internet prices, and improved user experience,” Wiocc affirmed.
Furthermore, a report states that the company is a significant investor in the Equiano project and owns a full fibre pair on the system. The cable landing point for Equiano is in Lagos, Nigeria.
Read: Equiano Google’s Underwater Internet Cable To Give High Speed Internet To Togo
WIOCC’s Equiano capacity may be upgraded entirely under the company’s control because it is the owner of a fibre pair, as the company noted. WIOCC owns and manages its very own equipment for terminating undersea lines, giving it the autonomy to operate and upgrade that equipment exactly how it sees fit.
WIOCC’s Equiano capacity will be extended into a new Open Access Data Centres (OADC) facility, which is currently undergoing fit-out in Rondebosch, Cape Town. At this location, clients will be able to connect with terrestrial infrastructure providers, cloud networks, partners, suppliers, and other ecosystem members.
Liquid Intelligent Technologies, which is a subsidiary of Cassava Technologies, also said in March that it had bought a fiber pair on the Equiano subsea cable.
ISP group Openserve, which recently severed ties with parent company Telkom, is slated to finish the cable’s landing in South Africa as Equiano’s official landing partner. This will mark the completion of the cable’s journey.
What to Expect
It is anticipated that the cable will result in a noticeable acceleration in internet connectivity across the entirety of the African continent. According to the findings of a new study that Africa Practice and Genesis Analytics conducted, it is anticipated that the internet speed in Namibia will increase by a factor of 2.5. Between the years 2022 and 2025, the cable system, which will be ready for service in the fourth quarter of 2022, will help contribute to the creation of an estimated 180,000 new jobs in South Africa.
Read: Google Subsea Cable to Bring Better Internet Connectivity to Nigeria
Observations
This landing marks the completion of the $14-billion journey that the Equiano cable has been on, which began in Lisbon, Portugal in 2019 and continued around the Western coast of Africa with various pauses along the way. Last month, it made its most recent stop at Swakopmund, which is located in Namibia.
According to WIOCC, OADC has been very active in South Africa, where it recently announced that it will have three new core data centres (DCs) live by the end of the third quarter of 2022. One of these DCs will be in Johannesburg, and the other two will be in Cape Town.
It is stated that these three core data centres are an essential part of OADC’s core-to-edge, open-access data centre offering. This offering currently consists of one more core DC, OADC Durban, and 25 up to 150kW OADC EDGE DCs that offers colocation, rooftop access, and high-speed network interconnectivity between facilities at up to 100Gbps and on multiple routes for diversity. This number will increase to over 100 over the next nine months.
WIOCC adds: “Our investment in Equiano continues our long-standing policy of making strategic investments in subsea cables.”
“We own almost a third of the 10Tbps EASSY system, which extends from South Africa along Africa’s eastern coastline to Djibouti and Port Sudan; we deliver more capacity than any other carrier on the WACS system, which links South Africa to western Europe and lands in many countries along the west coast of Africa; and we are a member of the 2Africa cable, which will bring another high-capacity connectivity option to Africa during 2023–24.”
Carrier IP Transit, point-to-point nationwide connection, high-performance Metro Connect, and open access colocation services in specified locations are among the services offered by WIOCC in South Africa. These services are provided by the WIOCC Group company OADC.