Liquid partners with Facebook for optical fibre network in DRC
19 July 2021
Zimbabwe’s company Liquid Intelligent Technologies (LIT) and US social networking giant Facebook are partnering to build an optical fibre network in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Through this network, the two partners initiate the realization of a digital corridor that will start from the centre of the country, cross the rainforest to connect east Africa to the submarine cable 2Africa in the Atlantic Ocean.
“This is one of the most difficult fibre builds ever undertaken, crossing more than 2,000 kilometres of some of the most challenging terrain in the world,” said said Nic Rudnick, group CEO of LIT. “Liquid Technologies and Facebook have a common mission to provide affordable infrastructure to bridge connectivity gaps, and we believe our work together will have a tremendous impact on internet accessibility across the region.”
Find out more Undersea mudslide caused continent-wide internet outages
02 July 2021
A new study has found that two subsea cables off west Africa were severely damaged by undersea mudslides, which may have been linked to nearby river flooding.
In January 2020, the south Atlantic 3/West Africa (SAT-3/Wasc) cable, linking Africa to Portugal and Spain was hit by a breakdown in Gabon, whilst the West Africa Cable System (WACS) that connects South Africa to the United Kingdom saw an outage off the coast of the DRC Congo.
Later, in March, the WACS cable experienced a further break affecting international bandwidth. Whilst many ISPs suffered extended outage periods, most of the major mobile operators were able to mitigate the impact on internet traffic due to their redundancy measures and were in a position to redirect data traffic to other subsea cable networks.
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Submarine cable DARE-1 now operational after five years of work
18 June 2021
A new submarine cable that connects Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya is now active after more than five years of work. The 4,900km DARE-1 cable is equipped with the latest generation of optical fibre, courtesy of a consortium made up of Djibouti Telecom, Somtel, Hormuud Telecom and Telkom Kenya. They have invested a total amount of over US$81m. DARE stands for Djibouti Africa Regional Express.
“Under the leadership of our president Ismaël Omar Guelleh, this is a new step in our government’s strategy to make Djibouti a hub for international cable systems,” said minister of communication, posts and telecommunications, Radwan Abdillahi Bahdon. “The Minister goes on to say that “the landing and hosting of more than eight cables in Djibouti has given our country the precious distinction of being the most connected country and a technological centre for sub-Saharan Africa”. DARE-1 is a new low-latency cable system aimed at bringing content closer to end-users in Africa, providing the region with much-needed internet capacity and access to global cloud computing services.
Find out more Network infrastructures: digital highways to be always connected
08 June 2021
Elisabetta Romano, CEO, Sparkle
Sparkle is a leading global telecommunications service provider offering a complete range of Internet and Data, Cloud, Data Center, Voice and Mobile solutions designed to meet the ever-changing needs of Enterprises, OTTs and Content Players, ISPs, Fixed and Mobile Operators.
As part of its expansion and transformation strategy, Sparkle is continuously increasing its efforts in innovating the product portfolio and in investing in a precise infrastructural expansion for the consolidation of its presence in selected key and high growth markets.
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