2Africa subsea cable lands in South Africa to boost internet connectivity

The 45 000km 2Africa cable announced in 2020 by Facebook (now Meta), one of the largest subsea cables in the world to interconnect 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe, has finally made its way into South Africa.

The cable, which landed in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein with a design capacity of up to 180 Tbps on key parts of the system, will deliver much-needed internet capacity, reliability, and improved internet performance across large parts of Africa.

It will also 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 initiative was led by MTN South Africa and MTN GlobalConnect (the 2Africa landing party in Duynefontein and Yzerfontein), in partnership with the 2Africa consortium, including China Mobile International, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, center3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.

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.

According to MTN, the launch is in line with its target to roll out a total of 135,000 km of proprietary fibre by 2025, generating up to $1 billion in revenue, as it positions itself as the number one African fibre player, by building subsea and terrestrial scalable capacity and resilience.

The 2Africa cable connection is expected to go live in 2023.