wiredinUSA August 2019

Image: Google

New cable for Africa

Google is funding a new cable, running from Portugal, down the west coast of the continent to Cape Town in South Africa, and with multiple landing points at countries along the coast. The first branch will land in Nigeria. The undersea cable, Google’s 14 th , will be named Equiano, after the Nigerian author Olaudah Equiano. Equiano was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the 1750s, eventually arriving in London where he became part of the British abolition movement.

cable built to serve the region. It will be the first subsea cable to use optical switching at the fiber-pair level, rather than the traditional approach of wavelength- level switching. “This greatly simplifies the allocation of cable capacity, giving us the flexibility to add and reallocate it in different locations, as needed.” It will be built by Alcatel Submarine Networks and is expected to be operational by 2021. Nigeria andwest Africa are already served by several cables, including the privately owned Main One.

Google says the cable will have 20 times more network capacity than the last

25

wiredInUSA - August 2019