Tiny harbour town close to Cape Town connects South Africa to the rest of the world
The name Yzerfontein may sound familiar to most South Africans, but the seaside town plays a critical role in connecting them to the Internet.
Located about 90km north of Cape Town along South Africa’s west coast, the town has just 1,200 residents. It was founded by the Katz family in the 1930s after they bought a farm by the same name.
Yzerfontein means “iron fountain,” derived from the Afrikaans words for iron (“yster”) and fountain (“fontein”).
Aside from the popular tourist attraction, Sixteen Mile Beach, which starts in the town and ends at the West Coast National Park, the town has largely flown under the public’s radar.
It briefly came into the spotlight in November 2025, when Seeff Property Group published data showing the town’s property prices were booming.
Over the last five years, the average price of a home in Yzerfontein doubled from R2 million to R4 million. The value is also more than three times higher than it was a decade ago.
Residential estates such as Pearl Point, Ocean Villas, Weskus Villas, and Yzerfontein Heights have added to the town’s appeal to homebuyers.
While it may only now be getting attention as a prime residential property, Yzerfontein has long been a familiar name to people working in South Africa’s telecoms industry.
The town has landing stations for two submarine cables connecting South Africa to the rest of the world — the West Africa Cable System (WACS) and 2Africa.
These cables have played an essential role in reducing international bandwidth costs, thereby also lowering the cost of Internet access in South Africa.
Yzerfontein was chosen as the landing location for these two cables due to its ideal coastal geography, allowing cable deployment with minimal environmental impact.
The town also has low crime levels, reducing the risk of deliberate vandalism or theft of equipment that would disrupt connectivity at the landing stations.
Multiple terabits of capacity
WACS went live in Yzerfontein in May 2012, amid surging Internet activity in South Africa due to the rollout of 4G and early use of fibre-optic Internet.
Telkom was responsible for landing the cable and owns, operates, and maintains the cable landing station. The cable’s rollout and operation are funded by a consortium of more than a dozen companies.
The consortium includes Vodacom, MTN, Tata Communications, Camtel, Congo Telecom, and several African telecoms operators.
Its launch came three years after Seacom rolled out the first fully-private undersea cable connecting South Africa to the rest of the world.
The rollout of WACS increased South Africa’s international bandwidth capacity to 5.12 Terabits per second (Tbps) across four fibre pairs.
It also achieved a round-trip latency of 138.5 milliseconds between South Africa and the UK, the lowest ping achieved over a transoceanic distance at that time.
The 17,200km system runs north from Yzerfontein through the Atlantic Ocean and connects South Africa to Portugal and the United Kingdom.
Several branches along the system connect to another 12 African countries, including Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Cameroon, Togo, and Ghana.
The system was upgraded with Huawei Marine’s 100Gbps technology in May 2015, increasing its capacity to 14.5Tbps.
The other landing station in Yzerfontein is for the 2Africa cable system, a vast submarine network planned to circumnavigate Africa and connect the continent to Europe and Asia, with a total length of 45,000km.
The cable is also being funded by Internet giant Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and WhatsApp, as well as several telecoms operators, including China Mobile International and MTN.
The cable was landed at Yzerfontein in December 2022 by MTN GlobalConnect, which has been rebranded as Bayobab. It is also responsible for operating and maintaining the landing station.
2Africa’s expansion along Africa’s east coast has been delayed by the conflict in the Middle East, which has halted its rollouts through the Red Sea and Persian Gulf.
Photos of Yzerfontein
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