Facebook: Submarine Cable Plans in Africa:’2Africa’ Project
Facebook:
Facebook group
China mobile
MTN GlobalConnect,
Orange
Vodafone,
are planning submarine cable/co-laying in Africa and the Middle East.2Africa: Project
A cable that spans 37,000 km (22,990 miles) and is interconnected.
Europe (eastward via Egypt),
Middle East (via Saudi Arabia),
Expected to be used in 16 African countries.
In a joint statement,
the companies said they expect the system to be live by 2023 or early 2024.
Once live, it should be able to deliver more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today, with a design capacity of up to 180Tbps on key parts of the system.
The companies, which also includes
- Saudi Arabia-based telecom firm STC,
- Telecom Egypt,
- African telecom firm WIOCC,
say service providers in the countries where 2Africa cable lands will obtain capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.
Facebook and telecom operators
did not reveal how much money they were investing on the project.
TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/14/2africa-africa-middle-east-facebook-subsea-cable/
Africa Telcos Threatened As Facebook, Google Plan Cable –
Telecoms operators
have expressed worry that the unchecked deployment of undersea cables and fibre optic infrastructure in Nigeria will threaten their survival.
They said that free access to Internet services that Over The Top players such as Facebook offered was a threat to the investments of mobile network operators.
They made this known while responding to recent news that Facebook in collaboration with a group of telecom companies
are set to connect Nigeria and 22 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe to the Internet by laying a large subsea cable with about 180Tbps capacity by 2024.
Also, Google
had last year announced plans to build a new private subsea cable that would connect Africa with Europe, with its first landing in Nigeria by 2021.
SubTel Forum
https://subtelforum.com/africa-telcos-threatened-as-facebook-google-plan-cable/