African telecommunications service provider MTN has announced that its national long-distance fibre optic network is almost complete and ready to go live
The project, which is a collaboration between Neotel and Vodacom, begun in 2009. It marked one of South Africa’s largest collaborations covering a distance of 5,000km and connecting major city centres across the country.
MTN chief telecommunications officer Kanagaratnam Lambotharan said, “About 50 per cent of the fibre floating and over 95 per cent of the total route trenching, has been completed. This certainly is a key milestone in our network footprint, which is designed and optimised to link major population centres and economic hubs, as well as interconnect with the international submarine cable landing sites.
“We are excited about the two major nodes, New Germany and Durban, which are going live as they are designed to accommodate significant capacity, thus enabling MTN to cater to additional customers in the area.”
A source from MTN said, “This initial route plays a significant role in MTN’s goals to take Africa to the world and bring the world to Africa by linking up with the EASSy undersea cable on the east coast.
Lambotharan added, “The network is designed to connect directly with MTN’s international cable assets, thereby allowing for tier one Internet backbone access and high-quality connectivity with other MTN operations across Africa and the Middle East.”
