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Africa-1 submarine cable system expected to launch in third quarter of 2017.
Five telecoms operators have signed an MoU for the construction of a new cable system that will connect Africa with the Middle East and South Central Asia.
MTN, PCCW Global, Saudi Telecom (STC), Telecom Egypt and South Africa’s Telkom on Monday announced they will work together to build the Africa-1 submarine system. They expect other carriers to join the project at a later date.
The telcos said they expect the construction and maintenance agreement covering the cable system to be signed by June, with a view to the cable entering commercial services in the third quarter of 2017.
The system will have a minimum three fibre pair-core and will cover 12,000 km along the east coast of Africa with an additional 5,000 km of branch cables. It will have several terabits of capacity from launch, the partners said.
Between them, they have access to landing sites at all major cable systems in the Middle East, thereby enabling Africa-1 to connect to the rest of the world.
"The addressable market of African wholesale bandwidth customers is more promising than in many other regions," said Telecom Egypt’s CEO Tamer Gadallah.
"The weakness of the continent’s international bandwidth is due to the lack of new systems coming into Africa to enhance the competitiveness of the African market," he added. "[The] Africa-1 system has a superior cost base and a state-of-the-art design that will enable it to be the most competitive system coming to serve this diversified market."
There were similar comments from top executives at the other consortium members.
PCCW Global CEO Marc Halbfinger described the new cable as "a natural extension to facilitate the increasing capacity demands of the Asia-Africa trade corridor with better levels of reliability to connect people and business in the world’s fast growing economies."
And MTN carrier services executive John Unterhorst explained that Africa-1 will complement existing cables in the region that are approaching the middle of their lives.
"Africa-1 will ensure future resiliency and capacity requirements for the explosive digital broadband future, so vital for Africa’s economic and social development," he said.
