Operator MTN South Africa and pan-African infrastructure services company MTN GlobalConnect, in partnership with the 2Africa consortium, has announced the landing of the 45,000km 2Africa cable in coastal sites Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, South Africa.
The 2Africa consortium includes China Mobile International, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, center3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.
MTN GlobalConnect – which is the 2Africa landing party in Duynefontein and Yzerfontein – has partnered with MTN South Africa to complete the landing on South African soil. The Yzerfontein landing will support the 2Africa West cable and the MTN South Africa landing station in Duynefontein will support the 2Africa East cable.
Once live, it will play a big part in delivering capacity in Africa from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. In fact MTN GlobalConnect says that the cable, with a design capacity of up to 180 TBps on key parts of the system, will deliver 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.
The 2Africa subsea cable system will support the western and eastern sides of Africa, once complete in 2023 and 2024 respectively. This means that South African service providers can acquire capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.
The 2Africa landing is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries. For MTN GlobalConnect, this landing is the first in a series of six across five countries: South Africa (two), Sudan, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Ghana.
The company says its target is to roll out a total of 13,000 km of proprietary fibre by 2025, generating up to US$1 billion in revenue.
