LIT creates direct access to USA internet resources via a new POP connection

04 October 2021

David Eurin, CEO, Liquid Seaadded to the project

David Eurin, CEO, Liquid Sea
added to the project

Africans will now be able to benefit from a direct connection to the USA as Liquid Intelligent Technologies (LIT) opens an internet point of presence in Miami, connecting to the Liquid network via a South Atlantic subsea cable.

Part of Liquid’s east-west route between the US and Asia via Africa, the new POP is connected to its 100,000km of fibre across 11 countries on the continent and another 14 countries via the Operators Alliance Programme and Liquid Satellite Services. Businesses and consumers should be able to leverage a better connection to the US, giving them access to cloud services, OTT resources, internet content and “high-quality voice and video calls” with family and business partners.

“The new POP in Miami will enable US-based operators, businesses, OTT, cloud service providers and CDN operators to access 40 data centres across Africa, including nine data centres operated by Africa Data Centres and six operated by Teraco,” said David Eurin, chief executive officer, Liquid Sea. “We will be able to interconnect with all our partners in the USA and provide a direct connection to US Internet resources to our Africa customers.”

Liquid (formerly Liquid Telecom) will connect to Miami via Fortaleza in Brazil and Luanda in Angola via the South Atlantic SACS and MONET subsea cables. The POP will be hosted at the Equinix data centre in Miami. To guarantee the best level of service, Liquid will peer at Equinix Miami Internet Exchange (MI3 in Boca Raton) with access to 116 potential peers, including most of the largest US companies. Liquid can already provide access to all data centres and millions of destinations in North America through its partnership with ZAYO.

With the Miami POP and new direct link across the South Atlantic, latency is expected to fall by 100ms to 163ms. Currently, Cape Town to Miami is sitting at 263ms via Europe. Video calls with family and business partners will be faster and of better quality thanks to a direct, lower latency route.