Vodacom welcomes 2Africa cable to the Eastern Cape

The 2Africa subsea cable, described as the largest subsea cable system in the world, has landed at the South African operator Vodacom’s network facility in Gqeberha. This is the first submarine cable landing in the Eastern Cape region.

The 2Africa consortium is made up of eight international partners, including Vodafone/Vodacom. Launched in May 2022, the subsea cable project aims to significantly increase the capacity, quality, and availability of internet connectivity between Africa and the rest of the world.

The Gqeberha landing is the 2Africa project’s third on the coast of South Africa, following two recent landings in the Western Cape by MTN GlobalConnect. Vodacom is the designated landing partner, providing facilities for the cable’s installation at an existing site in the Summerstrand area.

Through the 2Africa landing at Gqeberha, service providers will be able to obtain capacity on a fair and equitable basis. Direct international connectivity can then be provided to data centres, enterprise, and wholesale customers.

Once the fibre cable system has been deployed, businesses and consumers will benefit from improved quality, reliability, and lower latency for internet services. The cable system’s landing in the Eastern Cape will also offer the potential for regional job creation in sectors that rely on direct international connectivity, such as data centres, call centres and software development.

The 2Africa project underpins further growth of 4G, 5G and fixed broadband access by providing improved connectivity to underserved and rural areas and network resilience from the Eastern Cape to the rest of South Africa. As a gateway to international connectivity, the cable’s landing at Gqeberha will help to develop telecommunications networks in the Eastern Cape and surrounding provinces.

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Maxis holds off signing up for Malaysia 5G plan

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Infrastructure sharing and free Wi-Fi provision planned by Peru’s comms ministry

Peru’s Ministry of Transport and Communications (MTC) has announced a six-month-long infrastructure sharing pilot. It will take place in and around Lima, using three base stations, and in Lambayeque, on the coast of northern Peru, using one. The project, supported by operators Telefónica del Perú and Entel, aims to reduce investment, operation and maintenance costs and save energy.

The proposed mobile access network active infrastructure sharing scheme is to be known as Multi Operator Core Networks (MOCN). The idea is that telecommunication towers, antennas, equipment and radio controllers will be shared by those who join the scheme, though it’s not yet clear when it will start or how it will be ramped up if it proves popular.

That said, a system that promises cost savings could be attractive to operators. In fact, according to the TeleSemana news service, it’s already happened in Latin America. Last June, Telefónica in Mexico decided to migrate all its traffic to the AT&T network and got rid of the spectrum that it owned.

The MTC view, according to its announcement, is that « by increasing the bandwidth of mobile service transmission carriers in the same geographic location, it will be possible for two different operators to be able to provide their commercial services with higher speeds and capacities”.

The ministry has also announced plans to install 417 new wireless internet or Wi-Fi points in public spaces in rural towns. The aim is to reduce the digital divide and bringing internet services closer to places where people gather.

This scheme is not new; the ministry says that, during 2022, nearly three million internet connections were registered, free of charge, through what are known as Public Digital Access Spaces (EPADs) – 223 of them.

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TM R&D and ZTE sign optical networking MoU

Telekom Malaysia’s TM R&D has signed an MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with ZTE that will see the companies collaborate on optical network research, bringing the first 50Gbps bandwidth experience to Malaysia.

The MoU was signed by Dr Sharlene Thiagarajah, Chief Executive Officer, TM R&D and Steven Ge, Chief Executive Officer, ZTE Malaysia.

Under this agreement, TM R&D and ZTE will jointly explore the capabilities of next-generation Passive Optical Network (PON) access technology, 50GPON, to support various application scenarios. In addition, both entities will look into use cases that can deliver ultra-broadband access to the government, enterprise and consumers, as well as support the requirements of innovative services such as 5G, Cloud Virtual Reality (VR), industrial intelligent manufacturing for high bandwidth, low latency & jitter, and clock synchronisation, all of which will enhance the user experience in Malaysia. 

Dr. Sharlene Thiagarajah, Chief Executive Officer, TM R&D said: “TM R&D is committed to conducting research on future technologies and innovating new value-added smarter eco-systems that will improve the quality of user experience, and ultimately bring a positive impact on their lives. This fits well into the TM Group’s transformation towards becoming a human-centred TechCo.”

Steven Ge, Chief Executive Officer, ZTE Malaysia said: « With Gigabit home broadband services widely used in Malaysia at present, and the basic fixed network is in the time window of evolution from GPON to 10G PON, this partnership could not have come at a better time.”

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Tigo Panama pledges US$100m for 4G, fibre expansion

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