Equiano Subsea Cable Lands in South Africa

On Monday, 8 August 2022, Google's Equiano subsea cable landed at the Melkbosstrand Cable Landing Station which is located about 35 km north of Cape Town, South Africa. Openserve acts as the landing partner in South Africa for the Equiano subsea cable.

In April 2020, it was first reported Google's Equiano Cable to Land at Telkom's Melkbosstrand CLS in South Africa by SubmarineNetworks.com. Later in November 2021, it's reported Openserve to joined hands with Google as a landing partner for the Equiano cable in South Africa.

Openserve was the wholesale and networks division of Telkom (Telkom SA SOC Limited). On 13 October 2015, Telkom first launched Openserve as the functional separation of its wholesale and retail operations. Openserve operates Telkom’s over 160,000km national fibre network, and its old copper telephone lines. Telkom has announced that it will legally and structurally separate its wholesale and networks division Openserve from the rest of the business on 1 September 2022. Openserve will operate as separate legal entities wholly owned by Telkom SOC.

The Melkbosstrand Cable Landing Station currently houses SAT-3/WASC and SAFE submarine cable systems. SAT-2 was housed in the station and decommissioned in 2013. 

Openserve offers Google cable landing facilities in Melkbossstrand, as well as terrestrial services connecting the South African carrier neural data centers. A co-location facility has been purpose built in Cape Town and is available at the Melkbosstrand exchange building to host any Equiano investor backhaul networking equipment. 

Openserve will have 12Tbps capacity (or one fiber pair) out of the 144Tbps (or 12 fiber pairs) on the Equiano cable system, with its initial design and upgradable to 16Tbps in the future.

The Equiano cable is the state-of-the-art infrastructure based on space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology, with 12 fiber pairs and design capacity of 144Tbps, connecting South Africa, Namibia, Nigeria, Togo, Portugal, etc. The Equiano cable system is fully funded by Google, with one landing partner in each of the landing countries. 

The Equiano cable has its first landing in Lomé, Togo in March 20222. The Togolese company CSquared Woezon is the landing partner in Togo.  Later on, the Equiano cable landed in Nigeria, Portugal and Namibia respectively in April, May and July. 

WIOCC, as the Equiano's landing partner in Lagos, Nigeria, has acquired a full fiber pair on the Equiano cable system. 

Liquid also announced its acquisition of a fibre pair on the Equiano cable system and being the landing partner to land the Equiano subsea cable at the new cable landing station in Muanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).