Google’s Equiano cable landed in Namibia on Friday, a development which is expected to more than double the country’s internet connectivity capacity.
“It’s a major milestone in our capital investment program to increase capacity in the country. The WACS cable that Telecom landed more than a decade ago is at full capacity and we need additional capacity in the country. We are going to get up to 20 times more capacity with the Equiano cable with the US$5 million investment that we made into it. This forms part of our infrastructure investment program that we announced earlier,” Telecom Namibia CEO Dr Stanley Shanapinda told The Brief.
Paratus, has developed the landing station in Namibia and co-landed the cable which will only go live in December with Telecom Namibia.
The cable, featuring 12 fiber pairs and a design capacity of 150Tbps, will link Portugal to South Africa, with branches in Nigeria, St. Helena, DR Congo, and Namibia.
Equiano cable system is the third private international cable owned by Google and the 14th subsea cable invested by Google.
It will be only the second cable to land in Namibia after the West Africa Cable System.
Alcatel Submarine Network is manufacturing and installing the Equiano cable system.
In South Africa, the cable is landing at Telkom’s Melkbosstrand Cable Landing Station north of Cape Town.
Telecom Namibia plans to invest over N$2.3 billion in the next five years to modernize its network and improve quality of service.
