MTN lands subsea cable in South Africa to deepen internet connectivity

MTN Group says it has received a 45,000-kilometre subsea cable to connect African countries to Europe and the Middle East.

The subsea cable named 2Africa is a joint project of MTN South Africa and MTN GlobalConnect as well as a partnership with a consortium.

The consortium includes MTN GlobalConnect, China Mobile International, Meta French telecoms company Orange SA, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, Mauritius-based infrastructure provider WIOCC and Saudi Arabia’s center3.

In a statement on Tuesday, the telecom giant said the subsea cable would lay the foundation for improved global internet access, connecting people and continents. 

It said the subsea cable will play a big part in delivering much-needed capacity in Africa from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. 

It added that the 2Africa landing is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries.

Speaking on the partnerships as well as the subsea cable project, Ralph Mupita, chief executive, MTN Group, said it would deepen the continent’s internet adoption.

“Strategic partnerships, such as the one we have with the 2Africa consortium, will help us accelerate and deepen internet adoption and socio-economic progress across the African continent. 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,” Mupita said.

“Our target, which is underpinned by MTN’s ambition 2025 strategy, is to roll out a total of 135 000 km of proprietary fibre by 2025, generating up to $1 billion in revenue. Entrenching MTN as the number one African fibre player, by building subsea and terrestrial scalable capacity and resilience.

“This cable landing adds to another milestone to the digital railroads we are building around Africa, making telecommunications accessible and available.”

On his part, Frédéric Schepens, chief executive officer, MTN GlobalConnect, said the initiative complements our terrestrial fibre strategy to connect African countries and to the rest of the world.

“We are building scale infrastructure assets to meet the explosive growth in data traffic and accelerate the digital economy on the continent by creating a pan-African fibre railroad driving affordable connectivity,” he added.

“We are proud of the progress made on our journey and the key role we are playing in providing South Africans and the rest of Africa with the benefits of a modern connected life.”

According to the statement, 2Africa subsea cable system will support western and eastern sides of Africa once complete in 2023 and 2024, respectively.

The development is coming a year after Google launched Equiano undersea cable on the continent.

The subsea cable projects targets delivering a much-needed internet capacity, reliability, and improved internet performance across large parts of Africa, underpinning the further growth of 4G, 5G, and fixed broadband access for millions of people.