Following its landing in Cape Town in August last year, Seacom has today gone live with express connectivity on the Equiano subsea cable connecting the Mother City to Lisbon, Portugal which it says is the fastest direct route between the two continents.
“This launch results from years of project negotiations and planning, driven by a goal to be ready to offer quality service to our customers from day one,” says Prenesh Padayachee, Seacom’s group chief digital officer. “The Equiano subsea cable represents a new stage in Africa’s digital transformation meeting Africa’s growing data requirements, enabling cross-border digital trade, and offering citizens and enterprises new opportunities.”
Nick Walden, senior vice-president, Worldwide Sales at Seacom’s technology partner on the project, Infinera, adds: “We are delighted to partner with Seacom to light the Equiano subsea cable with our industry-leading ICE6 800G technology. With the industry’s highest spectral efficiency, ICE6 enables Seacom to maximise the number of high-speed services they can offer, providing multiple terabits of capacity on this critical subsea link.”
Initially announced in 2019 by Google, the Equiano subsea cable is one of the highest-capacity cables serving Africa. The cable stretches 15 000 kilometres from Portugal to South Africa, boasts 12 fibre pairs, and has a design capacity of 144 Tbps. In addition to its landing station in Melkbosstrand, Cape Town, the cable also has landing stations in Rupert’s Bay, St. Helena; Lomé, Togo; Lagos, Nigeria; and Swakopmund, Namibia.
From these stations, branching units will extend connectivity to other African countries.