The second phase of the Africa Coast to Europe submarine cable, which will be extended by 5 000 km, could very well be the last major broadband system rolled out to South Africa for some time.

The cable system, led by French telecoms operator Orange, together with networking company Alcatel-Lucent, currently stretches 11 500 km and connects France to Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria and Benin.

The next step will stretch the cable from the Gulf of Guinea island in São Tomé & Príncipe to South Africa, with an overall design capacity of 12.8 terabits per second.

According to a MyBroadband article, since 2009 South Africa has been connected via four other international subsea cables. Steve Song, founder of the Village Telco project, believes the country has enough capacity at this point. ‘It is likely that there will be another cable connecting Africa to Brazil but this seems likely to land either in Angola or Cameroon. South Africa will have to connect to it through another undersea or terrestrial network.’

1 December 2015
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