Liquid Intelligent Technologies' subsea cable connects SA to Mauritius

Liquid Intelligent Technologies has successfully installed the Mauritius Telecom T3 subsea cable connecting Mauritius to South Africa.

The cable has been deployed at Liquid's landing facility in Amanzimtoti, south of Durban on South Africa's east coast.

The move will bring a much-needed boost to the stability and redundancy around the connectivity that exists between the two countries, Liquid said in a statement.

"With this, Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa is bringing a critical increase in the availability of high-speed and reliable Internet connectivity for economies in the Indian Ocean islands to South Africa, leveraging on Liquid's 110,000km of fiber backbone in Africa," the group said.

The T3 cable consists of four fiber pairs, with a design capacity of 13.5 Tbit/s per fiber pair and 54 Tbit/s for the whole system.

"At Liquid South Africa, we are working towards building a digitally connected country that leaves no South African behind. Through our partnerships in multiple sea cables like Equiano, METISS, EASSy and even with the T3 cable system, we have ensured that South Africans and businesses alike can leverage their business needs using cost-effective, low-latency Internet to serve their business-critical connectivity needs," said Deon Geyser, CEO of Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa.

In addition to bringing reliable Internet connectivity to South Africa, the partnership hopes to stimulate economic growth and create job opportunities.

"This is yet another milestone achieved by Liquid SA as we continue to provide access to high-speed connectivity, the backbone for the country's businesses to operate and succeed in this digitally transformed business environment," added Geyser.

CEO of Liquid Intelligent Technologies South Africa (Source: Liquid Intelligent Technologies).

Liquid Intelligent Technologies is part of pan-African technology group Cassava Technologies, and another one of the group's companies, Liquid Dataport, launched a fiber route connecting Mombasa in Kenya to Muanda on the west coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) earlier this month.

That new route followed a partnership between Liquid Intelligent Technologies and Nokia on a new terrestrial fiber route connecting Mombasa, Kenya, and Johannesburg, South Africa.

Africa's fiber growth continues

Africa's fiber infrastructure continues to grow with major buildouts in both terrestrial fiber and undersea cables.

The world's largest planned submarine cable system, 2Africa, has made several landings over the past few months, the latest in Mahajanga in Madagascar in February 2023.

2Africa has four completed landings in South Africa, the latest of which was installed by the West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) near Durban in KwaZulu-Natal earlier in February.

There were also two landings in the Western Cape facilitated by MTN GlobalConnect (in Yzerfontein and Duynefontein) and another one by Vodacom in the Eastern Cape (in Gqeberha).

In June 2023, Paratus Botswana completed its new metro fiber ring around the capital of Gaborone.

In May 2023, Angola Cables and Orange partnered on an infrastructure sharing agreement on the West African Djoliba Network.

Also in May 2023, MTN Group's Bayobab partnered with infrastructure investment agency Africa50 to build terrestrial fiber cable worth US$320 million.

In January 2023, Dark Fiber Africa (DFA) and BCS also completed the first stage of their long-haul fiber backbone project in Zimbabwe.

*Top image is of the Mauritius Telecom T3 subsea cable making its landing in Amanzimtoti, South Africa. (Source: Liquid Intelligent Technologies).

— Paula Gilbert, Editor, Connecting Africa