Grace Ashiru
The 45,00km 2Africa cable, which Facebook (now Meta) said would be built by 2020 and connect 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, has finally reached South Africa. It is one of the biggest subsea cables in the world and will connect 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
The cable, which landed in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein and is designed to have a capacity of up to 180 Tbps on critical parts of the system, will give large parts of Africa the internet capacity, reliability, and speed improvements they need.
The project was led by MTN South Africa and MTN GlobalConnect, which were part of the 2Africa landing party in Duynefontein and Yzerfontein. They worked with the 2Africa consortium, which included Meta, MTNGlobalConnect, China Mobile InternationalOrange, center3, Vodafone, WIOCC, and Telecom Egypt
This is the first of six MTN GlobalConnect landings in five countries: South Africa (two times), Sudan, Côte D’Ivoire, Nigeria, and Ghana.
MTN says that the launch is in line with its goal to roll out a total of 135,000 km of proprietary fiber by 2025, which could bring in up to $1 billion in revenue as it positions itself as the number one fiber player in Africa by building scalable capacity and resilience both undersea and on land.
The 2Africa cable connection is scheduled to be operational in 2023.
