from DION HENRICK in Cape Town
CAPE TOWN, (CAJ News) – THE US$700 million Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable is now live and available for interconnection, expanding access to broadband connectivity and digital services in Africa.
Available at three of Teraco’s data centres across South Africa, the cable spanning approximately 17 000 km along the West Coast of Africa is the eighth submarine cable system to connect at the company.
ACE connects to 24 countries before backhauling via MTN South Africa, the landing partner, into Teraco.
It consists of two fibre pairs with a design capacity of 20 tera-bits per second (Tbps).
Latency is 145 milliseconds from Paris to Cape Town and 135 milliseconds from Lisbon to Cape Town.
Michelle McCann, Head of Interconnection and Peering, Teraco, said this underlined South Africa as a critical hub for access to services for sub-Saharan Africa.
“Our position as the hyper-connected colocation provider in Africa allows us to address the increasingly demanding level of global data transit. This platform sets us apart as one of Africa’s leading modern hybrid architecture platforms.”
Commissioned to support the cost-effective delivery of broadband services and digital applications for education, healthcare and other e-services, ACE reaches an estimated 410 million people, equivalent to 5,16 percent of the total world population.
A total of 13 of the 16 countries connected by ACE are in Africa.
Of those, seven were connected to the global internet backbone for the first time by the cable system.
– CAJ News