MTN lands subsea cable in South Africa to boost Africa's connectivity

Telecom Egypt SAE

13/12/2022 10:56

JOHANNESBURG, Dec 13 (Reuters) - MTN South Africa
 MTNJ.J  and MTN GlobalConnect, in partnership with a
consortium, have landed a 45,000 kilometre subsea cable in South
Africa, part of plans to build a subsea network to connect
African countries to Europe and the Middle East.
    Africa's big economies have a fast growing population of
internet users, with growth fuelled by rapidly expanding mobile
broadband networks and affordable smartphones.
    But the continent still lags behind the rest of the world in
internet connectivity.
    "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," MTN Group Chief Executive Ralph Mupita said in a
statement.
    The subsea cable project, called 2Africa which will go live
in 2023, aims to build subsea cable infrastructure which will
directly connect countries around the African coast to Europe
and the Middle East.
    MTN subsidiary MTN GlobalConnect said the landing for the
cable was in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, in the Western Cape
province of South Africa and the subsea cable system will
support the western and eastern sides of Africa once complete in
2023 and 2024 respectively.
    Subsea cables are the backbone of the internet, carrying 99%
of the world's data traffic.    
    The consortium includes MTN GlobalConnect, China Mobile
International, Meta  META.O , French telecoms company Orange SA
 ORAN.PA , Telecom Egypt, Vodafone  VOD.L , Mauritius-based
infrastructure provider WIOCC and Saudi Arabia's center3.
 (Reporting by Nqobile Dludla. Editing by Jane Merriman)
 ((nqobile.dludla@thomsonreuters.com; +27103461066;))