All the cables connecting South Africa to the world
South Africa’s submarine cable capacity connecting it to the rest of the world has increased from 540 Mbps at the turn of the century to over 400 Tbps in 2024.
The South Atlantic 3/West African Submarine Cable (SAT3/WASC), which became ready for service in April 2002, was the first submarine cable to be connected to South Africa this century.
It replaced the 9,500-kilometre SAT-2 cable, which was laid in 1993 and connected Melkbosstrand to Tenerife and Madeira, islands off the coast of Morocco.
By the time SAT-3/SAFE was installed, SAT-2 was reaching its maximum capacity of 560Mbps. SAT-3 instead offered a much higher capacity of 340Gbps.
The cable is over 13,000 kilometres long, starting at the South Western tip of Europe in Spain and Portugal, running along the West Coast of Africa and ending in Melkbosstrand in the Western Cape.
SAT-3 was one of a pair of cables connecting Europe, Western and Southern Africa, and the far East.
The other was the SAFE cable with an initial capacity of 10 Gbps and 440 Gbps today. Its landing points are Meklbosstrand and Mtunzini, KwaZulu-Natal.
In July 2009, South Africa received its next cable connection in the form of the privately-owned Seacom cable.
The cable has a capacity of 12 Tbps and is 15,000 kilometres long, running from Marseille, France, along the East coast of Africa and ending in Mtunzini.
Seacom’s cable launch broke Telkom’s monopoly on submarine capacity and helped reduce the price of broadband in South Africa.
The next cable in line to expand South Africa’s submarine cable capacity was the East Africa Submarine System (Eassy) cable in July of the following year.
Also connected at Mtunzini, the cable is around 10,500 kilometres long and runs along Africa’s East coast, eventually entering the Red Sea and ending in Port Sudan, Sudan.
Two years later, the West African Cable System (WACS) added an additional 5.12 Tbps of capacity to South Africa’s cable system, which has since been upgraded to 14.5 Tbps.
The MTN Group was a major contributor to the project, investing R1.6 billion into the making of the cable, guaranteeing 11% of the capacity.
South African companies that signed the construction and maintenance agreement were the MTN Group, Vodacom, Telkom, Broadband Infraco, and Neotel (now Liquid Intelligence Technologies).
It then took another nine years before the next cable, the 24 Tbps Meltingpot Indian Oceanic Submarine System (Metiss), landed in South Africa in March 2021.
The 3,200-kilometre cable connects Umbogintwini, KwaZulu-Natal, to Fort Dauphin in Madagascar, Le Port in Reunion, and Baie du Tombeau in Mauritius.
In June of the same year, the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) cable was extended as part of its fourth segment, delivering an additional 20 Tbps of capacity to the country.
ACE is connected to South Africa in Meklbosstrand and runs 17,000 kilometres up the West Coast of Africa to Pen March, France.
In August of 2022, South Africa received its highest additional capacity yet when Google’s 144 Tbps Equiano cable landed in Melkbosstrand.
The 15,000-kilometre-long cable follows a similar path to the SAT-3 cable, running along the West Coast of Africa to Sesimbra in Portugal, branching out to St. Helena.
Equiano soon began receiving competition from the Facebook-backed 2Africa cable, which claims a design capacity 180 Tbps.
It landed at Melbosstrand in December 2022.
The 40,500-kilometre-long cable will almost entirely encircles the continent when completed, starting in Bude, UK, and ending in Barcelona, Spain. It also branches off to connect parts of the Middle East.
Liquid Intelligent Technologies owns South Africa’s latest submarine cable to land in the country, T3. The cable is 3,200 kilometres long and connects Amanzimtoti to Mauritius.
The table below shows each cable as well as the date landed, capacity, length, and owners.
| Cable | Date landed | Capacity | Length | Owners |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SAT-2 | 1993 | 560 Mbps | 9,500 km | Decommissioned in 2013 |
| SAT3/WASC and SAFE | April 2002 | 800 Gbps | 14,350 km | Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Maroc Telecom, Mauritius Telecom, NATCOM (Nigeria), OPT, Orange, Orange Cote d’Ivoire, PCCW, SBIN (La Société Béninoise d’Infrastructures Numériques), Singtel, Sparkle, Tata Communications, Telecom Namibia, Telekom Malaysia, Telkom South Africa, Telstra, Telxius, Verizon, Vodafone |
| SEACOM | July 2009 | 12 Tbps | 15,000 km | IPS, Remgro, Sanlam, Convergence Partners, Brian Herlihy |
| EASSy | July 2010 | 10 Tbps | 10,500 km | BT, Bayobab, Bharti Airtel, Botswana Fibre Networks, Comores Telecom, Djibouti Telecom, Etisalat UAE, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Mauritius Telecom, Orange, Saudi Telecom, Sudatel, Tanzania Telecommunication Corporation, Telkom Kenya, Telkom South Africa, Telma (Telecom Malagasy), Vodacom DRC, WIOCC, Zambia Telecom |
| WACS | May 2012 | 14.5 Tbps | 14,530 km | Altice Portugal, Angola Cables, Bayobab, Broadband Infraco, Camtel, Cape Verde Telecom, Congo Telecom, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Office Congolais de Poste et Télécommunication, PCCW, Tata Communications, Telecom Namibia, Telkom South Africa, Togo Telecom, Vodacom DRC, Vodafone, Vodafone Espana, Vodafone Ghana |
| METISS | March 2021 | 24 Tbps | 3,200 km | CEB Fibernet, Canal+ Telecom, Emtel, SFR, Telma (Telecom Malagasy), Zeop (incl. Reunicable) |
| ACE | June 2021 | 20 Tbps | 17,000 km | Bayobab, Cable Consortium of Liberia, Canalink, Dolphin Telecom, GUILAB, Gambia Submarine Cable Company, International Mauritania Telecom, Orange, Orange Cameroun, Orange Cote d’Ivoire, Orange Mali, Republic of Cameroon, Republic of Equatorial Guinea, Republic of Gabon, Republic of Guinea Bissau, SBIN (Société Béninoise des Infrastructures Numériques du Bénin), STP Cabo, Sierra Leone Cable Company, Sonatel, Zamani Telecom |
| Equiano | August 2022 | 144 Tbps | 15,000 km | |
| 2Africa | December 2022 | 180 Tbps | 40,500 km | Bayobab (MTN), China Mobile, Meta, Orange, Saudi Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, WIOCC |
| T3 | 2023 | 3,200 km | Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Mauritius Telecom |
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