Nabilah Safira
TechInAfrica – Orange, PCCW Global, and PEACE have officially signed their agreement to deploy the new submarine cable, PEACE Med, during the Submarine Networks World international fair in Singapore. The draft agreement was announced during the capacity Europe event back in November 2018, and today the final agreement has been signed on, which marks the arrival of the first Chinese private submarine cable in France. PEAC is Pakistan and East Africa Connection Europe, which is an open and neutral submarine cable system invested by HENGTONG Optic-electric (HKT), the global information and energy network service provider.
Mr. Wu Qianjun, the Vice president of Hengtong and CEO of PEACE, said, “The PEACE project has been progressed very well and the equipment manufacturing has been achieved more than 60%. The system will be ready for service on time based on its schedule. We are confident that PEACE will provide low-cost capacity for those fast-growing regions and enhance the routing diversity in Asia, Africa, and Europe.”
“For Orange, PEACE is a major investment as it will provide greater route diversity, improved connection security and guaranteed support for increased capacity across all regions in the Indian Ocean zone, particularly Réunion and Mayotte,” Jérôme Barré, Chief Executive Officer, Orange Wholesale and International Networks, said.
Marc Halbfinger, Chief Executive Officer, PCCW Global, said, “Our collaboration with Orange is a critically important step towards bringing PEACE online and we trust the capabilities and vast experience of their teams in France to provide a successful and timely delivery of the European leg of the project. Orange has vast experience in submarine cable infrastructure development. So we are confident that Orange will not only successfully provide the necessary cable infrastructure in France, but also benefit from being one of the first major users of the PEACE cable to connect important and growing traffic from Africa to Europe.”
The submarine cable will connect France to Pakistan through a single landing point in Marseille by 2021 within the Europe-Asia route, and the city of Mombasa in Kenya through a brief route heading to the Indian Ocean that is optimized for latency, and to be extended to 15,000 km into South Africa soon.
Source: Biztechafrica.com
