Cairo – Mubasher: Egypt’s main internet services provider, Telecom Egypt, will partake in a sixteen-company consortium to construct the Africa-1 submarine cable system that will be linking Africa with the Middle East and South Central Asia and Europe.
The consortium-funded system, which consists of Saudi Telecom Company (STC), Telekom South Africa, MTN Group, PCCW Global, and Telecom Egypt, has signed a memorandum of understanding to build up a unique low-latency direct express route.
According to PCCW press release, “Africa-1 will have at least 3-fiber pair core that extends more than 12,000 km along Africa’s East Coast towards Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan, with up to an additional 5,000 km for branches. Africa-1 will leverage the latest state-of-the-art 100G technology and will be initially equipped to accommodate several terabits of capacity from day one”.
In this context, Homoud M. Al-kussayer, vice president and head of wholesale business unit of STC said “We believe that with its effective connectivity with the rest of the world, Africa-1 can become an important enabler and contributor to the economic progress of Africa in the coming years”.
The construction and maintenance agreement is scheduled to be inked in June 2016, while service is expected to be activated by the third quarter of 2017.
