China Mobile International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, STC, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC announced that they will partner to build 2Africa, a subsea cable to serve the African continent and Middle East. They announced the appointment of Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build the cable, in a fully funded project to enhance connectivity in the region.
The 2Africa cable will be 37,000 km long, making it one of the world’s largest subsea cable projects. It will interconnect Europe eastward via Egypt, the Middle East via Saudi Arabia, and 21 landings in sixteen countries in Africa. The system is expected to go live in 2023/4, delivering more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa currently,, with a design capacity of up to 180 Tbps on key parts of the system.
2Africa will deliver much needed internet capacity and reliability in large parts of Africa, serve fast-growing capacity demand in the Middle East and underpin the growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for hundreds of millions of people. In countries where the 2Africa cable will land, service providers will obtain capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.
The 2Africa cable has been designed to improve resilience and maximise performance, including the option of a seamless optical crossing between East Africa and Europe. The 2Africa parties and Airtel have signed an agreement with Telecom Egypt to provide a completely new crossing linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the first in over a decade.
This includes new cable landing stations and deployment of next-generation fibre on two new, diverse terrestrial routes parallel to the Suez Canal from Ras Ghareb to Port Said, and a new subsea link that will provide a third path between Ras Ghareb and Suez.
The 2Africa cable will implement the new SDM1 technology from ASN, allowing deployment of up to 16 fibre pairs instead of the eight fibre pairs supported by older technologies, for greater and more cost-effective capacity. The cable will incorporate optical switching technology to enable flexible management of bandwidth. Cable burial depth has been increased by 50 percent compared with older systems, and cable routing will avoid locations of known subsea disturbance.
