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Telecommunications and internet giants unveiled on Thursday a gigantic project to lay an undersea cable around Africa to boost Internet access on the underserved continent.
The consortium, which includes China Mobile International, Facebook, Orange and Vodafone, said a 37,000km long cable will make landfall in 16 countries in Africa and the Middle East.
“The system is expected to come online in 2023/4, delivering more than the total combined capacity of all submarine cables serving Africa today,” said the group, which includes regional operators.
The cable will be one of the longest in the world and will provide the continent with new high-speed links to Europe and the Middle East.
The connector will travel down the east coast of Africa and then down the west coast and connect to Britain, using new technology that doubles the amount of fiber optics.
Internet reliability is a problem
“2Africa will provide much-needed Internet capacity and reliability in large parts of Africa, complement the demand for rapidly growing capacity in the Middle East and support additional growth in 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of people, “consortium said.
His statement does not detail the cost of the scheme.
Many Africans access the Internet through their phones, and even those with a landline phone generally have slow speeds with the rest of the world due to insufficient bandwidth.
The reliability of the Internet is also a problem: the cable serving the west coast of Africa and linking to Britain has been interrupted this year.
The consortium said the new cable will be buried in trenches 50% deeper than before and will border areas where existing cables have been damaged.
The announcement comes after a major plan to provide high-speed Internet access via satellites in low Earth orbit, OneWeb, filed for bankruptcy as the coronavirus pandemic complicated its efforts to secure additional funding.
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