MTN SA lands world's longest undersea cable 2Africa in Western Cape

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2Africa, the world's longest undersea cable measured at 45,000km, has been landed in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein by MTN South Africa and MTN GlobalConnect, in partnership with the 2Africa consortium, which includes China Mobile International, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, connect3, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.

This subsea cable will lay the foundation for improved global internet access, connecting people and continents. Once live, it will play a big part in delivering much-needed capacity in Africa from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The 2Africa landing is one of several cable landings taking place across 46 locations in 33 countries.

MTN Group president and CEO Ralph Mupita said:

“Strategic partnerships such as the one we have with the 2Africa consortium will help us accelerate and deepen internet adoption and socio-economic progress across the African continent. Data traffic across African markets is expected to grow between four and five-fold over the next five years, so we need infrastructure and capacity to meet that level of growth and demand”.

The 2Africa subsea cable system will support the western and eastern sides of Africa, once complete in 2023 and 2024 respectively. This means that South African service providers can acquire capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis. This will support the development of a healthy internet ecosystem by facilitating improved internet accessibility for businesses and consumers alike.

MTN GlobalConnect – which is the 2Africa landing party in Duynefontein and Yzerfontein – has partnered with MTN South Africa to complete the landing on South African soil. The Yzerfontein landing will support the 2Africa West cable and the MTN South Africa landing station in Duynefontein will support the 2Africa East cable.

The cable, with a design capacity of up to 180TBps on key parts of the system, will deliver much-needed internet capacity, reliability, and improved internet performance across large parts of Africa; supplement the fast-growing capacity demand in the Middle East; and underpin the further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access for millions of people.