Data environment services company Teraco has announced that it is now an integral connectivity and interconnection point for Internet services company Google’s Equiano subsea cable.

The cable starts in Europe and runs along the West Coast of Africa between Lisbon, in Portugal, and Cape Town, in South Africa, with branching units along the way that can be used to extend connectivity to additional African countries.

Named after Nigerian-born writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who was enslaved as a boy, the Equiano cable is state-of-the-art infrastructure based on space-division multiplexing (SDM) technology, with approximately 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region.

“Equiano, which will be available from all Teraco data centre facilities, is a significant addition to Platform Teraco’s existing ecosystem of over 300 networks, 130 information technology service providers, 50 global content providers, and the key global cloud providers,” says Teraco head of platforms Michele McCann.

The availability of a new cable servicing the west coast of Africa, and branching into previously unserved countries, broadens the addressable market for digital services providers. It adds new resilience to existing African cable infrastructure and provides telecoms organisations, multinationals, and enterprises with additional capacities to empower their digital strategies.

“The cable brings connectivity across regions that were previously hard to reach,” says McCann.

Equiano will enable clients to increase the number of partners they connect to and expand their reach into new markets, she notes.

Peering at Africa’s largest Internet exchange NAPAfrica is now also possible for many West African countries and brings benefits such as reduced latency, network fault tolerance, reliable traffic exchange, increased routing control, and improved network performance.

Equiano will address the need for more cost-effective bandwidth at the lowest latency, further enabling intercontinental connectivity and the growth of Africa’s access to and participation in the digital economy. Teraco makes it easy and accessible for enterprises to connect within the data centre and immediately see the benefits, McCann highlights.

Equiano lands in Melkbosstrand, north of Cape Town, and is backhauled via Equiano landing partners, including Liquid Telecoms, Telkom Openserve and WIOCC, to Teraco’s data centre campus in Cape Town.

Teraco’s CT1 and CT2 data centres are strategic interconnection hubs on the African subsea cable map with access to Equiano and the cable systems of SAT3/SAFE, ACE and WACS that are already accessible from the facility. CT1 and CT2 are connected to the JB1 Campus in Isando, Gauteng, through a wide choice of carriers via diverse regional fibre routes.

Teraco’s Cape Town facilities offer clients secure colocation and interconnection services, and the ability to leverage Teraco’s digital hubs in Cape Town and Johannesburg directly, the company says.