Facebook in association with telecoms operators will add four more countries to its world’s largest subsea cable project.
Internet connectivity will be expanded to the Seychelles, the Comoros Islands, Angola and bring a new landing point to south-east Nigeria. This is in addition to the recently announced extension to the Canary Islands.
South Africa’s MTN GlobalConnect, Facebook, Mauritius-based infrastructure provider WIOCC, China Mobile International, France’s Orange, Saudi Arabia’s STC, Telecom Egypt and Vodafone are part of the consortium of the project, called 2Africa.
Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) has been selected to deploy the new branches, which will increase the number of 2Africa landings to 35 in 26 countries, further improving connectivity into and around Africa.
Most of the subsea route survey activity is now complete. ASN has started manufacturing the cable and building repeater units in its factories in Calais and Greenwich to deploy the first segments in 2022.
The consortium launched the cable, which is expected to go live in late 2023, in May 2020 to connect those countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The companies said 2Africa will be the largest subsea cable project in the world.
