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A model of the 2Africa cable
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- Facebook, MTN and others are planning a massive submarine cable to connect all of Africa to the Internet.
- The group wants to start laying the cable next year and hopes to have it operational by 2023.
- Data prices could drop, because all operators will have access to cable.
- For more stories go to www.BusinessInsider.co.za.
A consortium of Facebook, MTN, Vodafone and others have just announced plans for Africa’s largest undersea cable, which should cut data prices.
The massive 2Africa cable is expected to come online in 2023 or 2024. It is being built by the consortium which also includes China Mobile and Orange.
It is the world’s first cable designed to serve all of Africa, and will deliver more than the combined total capacity of all submarine cables serving the continent at this time.
“At 37,000 km long, 2Africa will be one of the largest submarine cable projects in the world and will interconnect Europe (eastward through Egypt), the Middle East (via Saudi Arabia) and 21 landings in 16 countries in Africa “the consortium said in a statement.
The cable has a higher fiber capacity and is offered to all networks in the countries where it lands. That means that no network has exclusive access to the data. Operators will continue to set local prices, but increased competition and data availability should cause data prices to drop.
“This will support the healthy development of the Internet ecosystem, enabling the necessary accessibility while supporting the growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of people,” the group said.
According to the consortium, the cable has a design capacity of 180TBps in key parts of the system and “will be the most complete submarine cable to serve the African continent and the Middle East region.”
It will sink 50% deeper than existing cables, which will hopefully mean fewer internet disruptions. South Africans have suffered repeated outages in recent months due to problems with submarine cables. One of the largest disruptions was caused by a short circuit in a cable that was caught by heavy sediment flowing from the Congo River.
The consortium says it is busy preparing for marine studies. Component manufacturing is expected to begin late next year, which is also when the group wants to start laying the cable.
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