Equiano undersea Internet cable steps closer to landing in South Africa
Paratus Group has announced that it has landed Google’s Equiano submarine Internet cable in Swakopmund, Namibia.
Equiano’s Swakopmund landing comes three months after it came ashore in Lagos, Nigeria.
Google’s Equiano cable connects Europe to Africa’s western coast via a landing station in Lisbon, Portugal, and has nearly ten times the West Africa Cable System’s (Wacs) capacity at 144 Tbps.
The undersea cable will make its final landing in Melkbosstrand, Cape Town and is expected to be fully operational in Q4 2022.
Paratus completed building Swakopmund’s cable landing station in January this year in partnership with Telecom Namibia.
It said access to the Equiano cable means Namibia no longer only has to rely on Wacs for its international Internet connectivity.
“This cable will become a critical element in meeting Namibia’s current and future international connectivity demands, as the cable incorporates new technology that enables approximately 20 times more network capacity than the current Wacs cable,” Telecom Namibia chief executive Stanley Shanapinda said.
Besides the massive leap in capacity, the Equiano cable will also provide redundancy by offering alternative cable connections if other routes are damaged.
Liquid Intelligent Technologies secured a fibre pair on Equiano’s cable in preparation for when it lands in Melkbosstrand before the end of the year.
Liquid said Equiano would address the increasing need for Internet capacity to support cloud services throughout Africa.
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