Google’s Equiano cable landed in Namibia last Friday, a move that is expected to double the country’s internet connectivity capacity.
Below are some facts you need to know about the cable:
- Equiano cable is the third private international cable owned by Google and the 14th subsea cable invested by Google.
- Equiano connects Portugal and South Africa, running along the West Coast of Africa, with branching units along the way that can be used to extend connectivity to additional African countries.
- Like all Google private subsea cables which carry the names of historical luminaries, Equiano is named after Olaudah Equiano, a Nigerian-born writer and abolitionist who was enslaved as a boy.
- 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.
- The cable features 12 fibre pairs and has a design capacity of 144Tbps.
- Equiano will have a direct impact on internet connectivity in all the countries in which it lands, resulting in faster internet speeds, lower latency, and lower wholesale and retail internet prices.
- Equiano will be the first subsea cable to incorporate optical switching at the fiber-pair level, rather than the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching. This greatly simplifies the allocation of cable capacity, giving us the flexibility to add and reallocate it in different locations as needed.
- Alcatel Submarine Network was awarded the contract to manufacture and install the cable.
- Equiano will indirectly create 21 000 jobs in Namibia according to a Regional Economic Impact Assessment commissioned by Google and conducted by Africa Practice with economic modelling assistance from Genesis Analytics.
- The expected increase in broadband penetration and adoption by consumers, businesses, government institutions and educational establishments is expected to lead to savings of CO2 emissions of 21 kilo tonnes in Namibia.
- Namibia is expected to initially use only 0.5% bandwidth of the cable.
- Paratus and Telecom Namibia are the landing partners for the Equiano cable in Namibia .
