Telkom and MTN partner for new undersea fibre cable

MTN, PCCW Global, Saudi Telecom Company, Telecom Egypt, and Telkom have signed a memorandum of understanding for a new submarine cable system – Africa-1.

The consortium said the cable will connect Africa with the Middle East and South Central Asia, and provide connectivity to Europe.

“The consortium members have access to landings at major cable systems in the Middle East, which will facilitate connectivity between Africa-1 and the rest of the world,” said the group.

“Africa-1 will have at least 3-fibre pair core that extends more than 12,000km along Africa’s East Coast towards Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan, with up to an additional 5,000km for branches.”

The cable system will use the “latest state-of-the-art 100G technology”, and will be equipped to handle “several terabits of capacity from day one”.

Africa-1 will also connect with other cable systems, and there will be full open access at all cable landing points.

The “Construction and Maintenance Agreement” is expected to be signed by June 2016, with a target ready-for-service time frame of the third quarter of 2017.

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