Smartoptics strengthens Teraco’s 100G Cape Town corridor

Smartoptics has teamed up with regional partner HardwareCo to support Teraco’s deployment of redundant 100G DWDM links between its CT1 and CT2 data centres in Cape Town

The new high-capacity connection reinforces a critical digital corridor that supports Africa’s expanding cloud, content, connectivity and financial ecosystems, delivering low-latency and cost-efficient access along one of South Africa’s fastest-growing bandwidth routes.

Teraco, a Digital Realty company, operates seven data centres across South Africa and serves as the country’s largest vendor-neutral data centre platform. With more than 650 customers and over 27,000 interconnects, the company plays a central role in enabling secure and direct data exchange for cloud providers, global content networks, telecom operators and financial institutions across Sub-Saharan Africa.

Growing demand from customers for 100G connectivity between the CT1 and CT2 facilities led Teraco to increase backbone capacity. Smartoptics’ compact 1U DWDM solution was selected for its efficient use of space and power, while also improving fibre utilisation and offering greater operational flexibility through breakout functionality.

“As Africa moves from 10G to 100G, DWDM equipment licensing fees have become a real blocker for many,” commented Michele McCann, head of platforms, Teraco Data Environments. “That’s why Smartoptics’ open approach immediately stood out to us. There are no hidden licenses or vendor restrictions, and it’s so intuitive that our IP engineers could operate it after just a single day of training – without needing to become optical transmission experts. This flexibility and ease of use let us scale fast without worrying about pluggable compatibility or hiring more staff to manage it.”

The rollout was delivered in partnership with HardwareCo, Smartoptics’ regional partner for projects across Africa. The deployment was completed quickly and without service disruption, demonstrating how open DWDM architectures can reduce complexity, shorten deployment timelines and allow operators like Teraco to retain full in-house control of their optical infrastructure.

“We are very proud to support Teraco in achieving their high-capacity connectivity between CT1 and CT2, and very excited to have partnered with Smartoptics for this”, says Mark Tinka, managing director at HardwareCo.

“We selected Smartoptics as our key DWDM technology partner because of their unique approach to optical networking that is based on open standards and open architectures. This has democratized access to DWDM technology in a way that uniquely aligns with the challenges and goals of developing regions like Africa”.

Looking ahead, Smartoptics highlights the importance of efficient inland transport as new subsea cable capacity continues to land along Africa’s coastlines.

“Africa’s coastal regions are seeing huge new waves of subsea capacity, but getting that bandwidth inland efficiently is the next big challenge. Teraco’s investment shows how open optical networking with no license fees can bridge that gap, enabling scalable, cost-effective transport that matches the continent’s growth and future demand. We’re proud to support Teraco in this effort together with HardwareCo, helping make Africa’s data routes as open and dynamic as its digital ambitions and signalling that the region is ready for global-scale platforms,” concluded Magnus Grenfeldt, CEO, Smartoptics.