- Lands 45,000km 2Africa Subsea Cable in South Africa
Telecommunications operator, MTN has said it is working to attain 135,000km of proprietary fibre infrastructure by 2025, and through it generate up to $1 billion in revenue.
MTN Group President and CEO Ralph Mupita expressed this in his reaction to a 45,000km undersea cable just landed in south Africa by MTN South Africa and MTN GlobalConnect, in partnership with the 2Africa consortium.
According to Mupita, “Our target, which is underpinned by MTN’s Ambition 2025 strategy, is to rollout a total of 135 000 km of proprietary fibre by 2025, generating up to $1 billion in revenue. Entrenching MTN as the number one African fibre player, by building subsea and terrestrial scalable capacity and resilience.”
He said strategic partnerships such as the one we have with the 2Africa consortium will help MTN to accelerate and deepen internet adoption and socio-economic progress across the African continent.
“Data traffic across African markets is expected to grow between four and five fold over the next 5 years, so we need infrastructure and capacity to meet that level of growth and demand”.
Mupita said the cable landing adds another milestone to the digital railroads MTN is building around Africa, making telecommunications accessible and available.
The new 45,000km 2Africa cable has just landed in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, South Africa in a collaborative deal by the 2Africa Consortium that includes China Mobile International, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, center3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.
For MTN GlobalConnect, this landing is the first in a series of six across five countries including South Africa (two), Sudan, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Ghana.
According to a statement by the telecoms giant, this will allow MTN GlobalConnect to showcase, in a tangible manner, the importance of connectivity and creating cross border networks, that connect Africa to the rest of the world, adding that the 2Africa cable connection will go live in 2023.
MTN express confidence that this subsea cable will lay the foundation for improved global internet access, connecting people and continents.
Once live, it will play a big part in delivering much-needed capacity in Africa from Europe, the Middle East and Asia, MTN said.
It further noted that the 2Africa landing is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries.
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In his remark, MTN GlobalConnect CEO, rédéric Schepens said “MTN GlobalConnect is pleased to participate in the bold 2Africa subsea cable project.
The initiative, according to him, complements its terrestrial fibre strategy to connect African countries to each other and to the rest of the world.
He added: “We are building scale infrastructure assets to meet the explosive growth in data traffic and accelerate the digital economy on the continent, by creating a pan-African fibre railroad driving affordable connectivity.
“We are proud of the progress made on our journey and of the key role we are playing in providing South Africans and the rest of Africa with the benefits of a modern connected life.”
What to Know About the Project
The 2Africa subsea cable system will support the western and eastern sides of Africa, once complete in 2023 and 2024 respectively. This means that South African service providers can acquire capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.
This will support the development of a healthy internet ecosystem by facilitating improved internet accessibility for businesses and consumers alike.
MTN GlobalConnect, which is the 2Africa landing party in Duynefontein and Yzerfontein, has partnered with MTN South Africa to complete the landing on South African soil.
The Yzerfontein landing will support the 2Africa West cable and the MTN South Africa landing station in Duynefontein will support the 2Africa East cable.
The cable, with a design capacity of up to 180 TBps. on key parts of the system, will deliver much-needed internet capacity, reliability, and improved internet performance across large parts of Africa; supplement the fast-growing capacity demand in the Middle East; and underpin the further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for millions of people.
