The 2Africa cable has landed in the Republic of the Congo.
“Yesterday was held a press briefing at the Regulatory Agency for Posts and Electronic Communications (ARPCE) where the CEOs of ARPCE and Airtel had the pleasure of announcing the arrival of the 2Africa submarine cable in Congo, an ambitious large-scale project,” Airtel Congo posted this week.
“This groundbreaking project will significantly increase our connectivity capacity and pave the way for superior digital services.”
The cable is landing in the city of Pointe-Noire. Industry observer Philippe Devaux noted the cable is landing at a new pre-fabricated modular cable landing station (CLS). The new CLS is reportedly located close to the existing decade-old CLS hosting the West Africa Cable System (WACS) cable.
Devaux also suggested a new terrestrial link might be extended from Airtel’s CLS to a new ARPCE data center still under construction in the city.
2Africa is the second cable to land in the Republic of the Congo. The WACS cable – deployed in 2012 – runs from South Africa to the UK and is owned by a consortium including Vodafone, Liquid Intelligent Technologies, Altice, CongoTelecom, Telkom South Africa, and others.
Work laying the East African portion of the cable started in late 2022. Earlier this month Angola’s state-owned local telco Unitel announced the first major landing of the 2Africa subsea cable on Africa’s west coast, landing on the seafront in the capital Luanda.
The cable is also set to land in Muanda in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, and seven more stops along the African coast before reaching Portugal and then the UK.
The WACS cable was one of two damaged last week off the coast of West Africa following an undersea rockslide.