S05 CAF 3 2021 Fibre Optic_Layout 1 17/08/2021 06:30 Page 15
Subsea cables
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TECHNOLOGY
The Namibian coastline, one of many areas that are soon to be landing points for subsea cables.
Innovation under the water: the cables are coming Technology advances are driving resilience, speed and data volume as the Africa undersea cable market continues to expand. Phil Desmond looks at some of the big names driving this expansion and interviews two of the companies involved in the Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe (PEACE) system.
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REPORT LAST year from independent non-profit research institute RTI International called the Economic Impact of Subsea Internet Cables in Sub-Saharan Africa suggested a range of positive impacts – from an over 8% increase in employment in areas that are connected to fibre to a 19% increase in GDP per capita for countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo. RTI completed a series of studies, in partnership with Facebook (itself an investor in a number of undersea cable systems), that analysed the economic impact of subsea cables and the improvement in connectivity they delivered to six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. In collaboration with African telecommunications experts, the RTI team documented how improvements in connectivity catalysed economic opportunity and growth in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania. However, recent announcements underline not just the economic benefits but how the technology used is improving. Take for example the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) subsea cable. ACE covers about 17,000 km along the west coast of Africa, stopping off in 19 countries. Then it’s backhauled by landing partner and South African operator MTN into Teraco’s data centre facilities. This is a major combination of two gamechanging modern technologies. Users of ACE now have direct access to Teraco’s ecosystem
www.communicationsafrica.com
of over 350 networks, 130 IT service providers, 50 global content providers, and a number of key global cloud providers. This interconnectedness with data centres is also to be seen in the UAE whose new SmartHub Kalba facility is to be a landing for the new Africa-1 subsea cable. The new facility is due to open by the first quarter of 2022. The 10,000 km Africa-1 cable will provide eight fibre pairs to connect Africa and the Middle East eastward to Pakistan and westward to Europe, increasing the available transmission capacity between Asia and Europe. The technology in the cable itself is amazing too. The system will be equipped from day one with ASN 1620 Softnode transmission equipment, featuring high-performance 200/300/400 Gb/s advanced coherent XWAV line cards. Of course, submarine cables have been landing in or near Africa for some years. The WACS (West Africa Cable System) submarine cable, for example, was delivered in 2012. WACS is an ultra-high-capacity fibre optic submarine
“The 2Africa subsea fibre optic cable project will deliver more than the total combined capacity of all subsea data cables serving Africa today”
cable system which links the south of Africa and Europe, spanning the west coast of Africa and terminating in the UK. This four fibre pair system with total length of approximately 16,000Km is, we are told, complemented with 15 terminal stations and involves a consortium of 18 leading international telecom carriers. Then there’s EASSy. EASSy is a 10,000km submarine fibre-optic cable system deployed along the east and south coast of Africa to service the voice, data, video and internet needs of the region. It links South Africa with Sudan via landing points in Mozambique, Madagascar, the Comoros, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti. The cable is said to incorporate the latest developments in submarine fibre optic technology, making it economical to connect the eastern and southern coast of Africa into the high-speed global telecommunications network. The system is owned and operated by a group of 16 African telecommunications operators and service providers and a smaller group – just under 10% of the total – of international operators and service providers. In its time (it entered service in 2010) EASSy was, its providers suggest, the highest-capacity system serving sub-Saharan Africa, with more than 10Tbps, two fibre-pair configuration and the first to deliver direct connectivity between east Africa and Europe / North America. It was also the only system with built-in resilience end to end. EASSy interconnects with multiple international submarine cable networks for
Special Anniversary Issue 2021
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