MTN Plans $320mn Fibre Cable to Connect African Countries
Telecommunication service provider, MTN Group, has announced a plan to build a $320 million inland fibre cable to connect ten countries across Africa over the years 2023, 2024 and 2025 as it forges ahead to expand its service and make it available to more and more people in the continent.
According to a statement from the company, it will do this through its MTN GlobalConnect unit (now known ad Bayobab) and the Africa50 infrastructure investment agency. Both companies signed a partnership to develop Project East2West, a terrestrial fibre optic cable network connecting the eastern shores of Africa to those on the continent’s west.
The project will add about 20,000 kilometres of new cable and interconnect over 100,000 kilometres of fibre. This project is anticipated to provide significant enhancements in data traffic for internet service providers, mobile network operators, and hyper scalers in the relevant countries. Moreover, it is expected to address the challenges in global internet traffic entering and exiting Africa. The solution is projected to reduce latency by as much as 65% on the route from east to west.
According to MTN, Africa needs at least 500,000 more kilometres of fibre optic cables and this gap has attracted investments from global giants like Alphabet’s Google and Meta’s Facebook in a bid to provide better connections to the young, tech-savvy population.
“This partnership with Africa50 comes at an opportune time, just as we rebrand MTN GlobalConnect to Bayobab to position the business as an Africa-focused open-access digital infrastructure platform,” said MTN group president and CEO Ralph Mupita. “The alliance is more than cables and connections; it is about building bridges of connectivity that span nations and bring people closer together.”
“For landlocked African countries, Project East2West will improve latency by almost two-thirds and increase capacity to support high-quality broadband access. In this way, it will level the playing field and ensure everyone has a fair chance to succeed in the digital world,” he added.
Bayobab CEO Frédéric Schepens said: “Guided by the belief that everyone deserves the benefits of a modern connected life, we see the provision of digital infrastructure as critical in driving digital transformation, weaving African countries together and connecting them to the rest of the world.”
He added: “Africa’s connectivity relies on strategic and global partnerships coming together to build the much-needed large-scale backbone infrastructure to meet the explosive demand for digital services. We are looking forward to Project East2West meeting the connectivity demands to power digital services, bridging the digital divide across Africa, and paving the way for the sustainable digital societies of tomorrow.”
As a co-developer, Africa50 is fostering the harmonisation of regional data and security regulations, boosting consumption of local content throughout the region and promoting inter-regional exchanges and regional economic development.
“Project East2West is a remarkable and transformative project that will step-change Africa’s internet capacity expansion drive by supporting the growth and development of 4G and 5G,” said Africa50 CEO Alain Ebobissé.
“This is an important project that will have a significant impact on Africa’s quest to make the internet accessible to most of its growing population. Partnering with a large pan-African company like Bayobab and MTN is important to roll out such an impactful cross-border project,” he added. # MTN Plans $320mn Fibre Cable to Connect African Countries
