● A subsea boost to the continent's digital growth

Equiano cable could have huge impact on data costs, GDP and jobs in SA and Africa

As competition increases in transmitting data into Africa, the cost of such data decreases, which will eventually benefit consumers and businesses Prenesh Padayachee

Seacom group chief digital officer

● The company that started the undersea cable revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa, wholesale connectivity service provider Seacom, has partnered with Google on Equiano, the latest of more than a dozen subsea cables servicing the continent, which for South Africa could yield lower data costs, jobs and a boost to growth.

“A higher capacity of data coming into and out of the country will eventually impact data costs,” Seacom group chief digital officer Prenesh Padayachee told Business Times.

“As competition increases in transmitting data into Africa, the cost of such data decreases, which will eventually benefit consumers and businesses. Equiano represents a new stage in Africa’s digital transformation, meeting Africa’s growing data requirements, enabling cross-border digital trade and offering citizens and enterprises new opportunities.”

The Equiano cable stretches 15,000km from Portugal to South Africa, with landing stations in Melkbosstrand, Cape Town; Rupert’s Bay, St Helena; Lomé, Togo; Lagos, Nigeria; and Swakopmund, Namibia. From these stations, branching units extend connectivity to other African countries.

Google anticipates the Equiano cable will have a major economic impact on these countries. An assessment commissioned by Google and conducted by Africa Practice in 2021 forecast the cable would increase South Africa’s GDP by $5.8bn (about R106bn) and create 180,000 indirect jobs by 2025.

Subsea cables bring direct high-capacity internet access, reducing the time it takes for data to traverse the planet. It is experienced by the business user and consumer as seamless access to websites, apps, downloads and streaming services.

Equiano, Africa’s highest-capacity link to the global internet yet, was completed late last year and Seacom this week became its first local internet service provider.

The Equiano cable offers express connectivity from Cape Town to Lisbon. It joins 10 other cables on the Atlantic coast, along with another eight on the continent’s eastern coast, including the Seacom cable.

Previously, the highest-capacity cable serving the subcontinent was the West Africa Cable System (Wacs), connecting South Africa with the UK.

Owned by a consortium that includes MTN, Vodacom, Telkom and Liquid, Wacs has a capacity of 14.5 terabits per second (Tbps).

The Equiano cable, in contrast, has a 144 Tbps capacity. However, this does not immediately mean higher broadband speed for the end-user. But it will boost the efficiency of data transfers, which will be experienced as faster connections to the global internet as it eliminates bottlenecks and slowdowns caused by inefficient connectivity and low capacity along the data route.

The biggest benefits will be in competition and cost.

“Seacom upgraded its core metro networks in Cape Town and Johannesburg, allowing for greater data throughput, which allows faster transfer of data, which translates into an improved user experience. The benefit to end customers is that the cable provides low-latency bandwidth capacity, which translates to data and content being delivered at much higher speeds, near real time.”

Seacom now offers private line services with latency speeds — the time it takes between a signal being transmitted and received — of about 110 milliseconds between South Africa and Europe, making it the fastest direct route between the continents.

It is a coup for Seacom, as the Equiano cable was primarily built to address Google’s data requirements, said Padayachee.

“The cable further provides muchneeded capacity between the continents and addresses the future needs of the growing demand for data … Advances in technology have facilitated running transmission services across [long] distances and this allows us to remain at the forefront of this technology curve.”

He said Google required Seacom to meet various equipment and installation requirements, which it implemented with the help of technology partner Infinera, which specialises in optical fibre networking. Undersea cables contain large numbers of “fibre pairs”, two separate optical fibres that transmit data in opposite directions.

“Seacom installed terminal equipment to activate capacity on a fibre pair on the cable system,” Padayachee said, and the company then extended the fibre pair from the cable landing station to its Teraco data centres locally.

“Due to the high capacity on the cable, we further upgraded our regional terrestrial networks in Cape Town and Johannesburg to ensure the networks are at a standard capable of transmitting much higher volumes of data,” Padayachee said.

“This launch results from years of project negotiations and planning.”