MTN Lands 2Africa Cable in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, South Africa

MTN South Africa and MTN GlobalConnect, in partnership with the 2Africa consortium have landed the 45 000km 2Africa cable in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein, South Africa. MTN GlobalConnect is the 2Africa landing party in both Duynefontein and Yzerfontein. The 2Africa cable connection will go live in 2023.

The 2Africa landing is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries. The 2Africa cable system is designed with a system capacity of up to 180 Tbps on 16 fiber pairs on key parts of the system, invested and built by the 2Africa consortium comprising China Mobile International, Djibouti Telecom, Meta (Facebook), MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, Saudi Telecom Company (stc), Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.

For MTN GlobalConnect, this landing is the first in a series of six across five countries: South Africa (*two), Sudan, Cote D’Ivoire, Nigeria and Ghana, will allow MTN GlobalConnect to showcase, in a tangible manner, the importance of connectivity and creating cross border networks, that connect Africa to the rest of the world.  

MTN GlobalConnect – which is the 2Africa landing party in Duynefontein and Yzerfontein – has partnered with MTN South Africa to complete the landing on South African soil. The 2Africa West cable lands at the Yzerfontein Cable Landing Station, sharing the existing BMH and Telkom CLS for WACS cable which was ready for service in 2012. The 2Africa East cable lands at MTN South Africa's Duynefontein Landing Station, sharing BMH, CLS and terrestrial infrastructure with the ACE cable system.

The 2Africa subsea cable system will support the western and eastern sides of Africa, once complete in 2023 and 2024 respectively. This means that South African service providers can acquire capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis. This will support the development of a healthy internet ecosystem by facilitating improved internet accessibility for businesses and consumers alike.

Prior to the landing of 2Africa in South Africa, Openserve, the wholesale and networks division of Telkom South Africa, partnered with Google to land the Equiano subsea cable at its Melkbosstrand Cable Landing Station, which is located at about 4 km south to the 2Africa Duynefontein Landing Station.

Equiano and 2Africa will deliver high capacity to South Africa with diverse routes.