Teraco’s Michelle McCann says the increased capacity will bring a direct benefit to data-driven organisations.
The Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable has landed in South Africa, and is available for interconnection at Teraco’s three data centres in the country.
ACE spans approximately 17,000km along the West Coast of Africa, connecting to 19 countries. In South Africa, it is backhauled via MTN South Africa, into Teraco’s data centres.
Michelle McCann, head of interconnection and peering at Teraco, says that there is a notable shift towards a more interconnected offering, making Teraco’s African Cloud Exchange vital as it links enterprise systems and data with networks, cloud providers, platforms and cable systems.
“Data centres like ours act as the perfect neutral hub for interconnection and data exchange. It’s here that onramps and switching points from many different cloud providers and network operators meet, and as companies increasingly embrace a hybrid infrastructure, the integration and interconnection between the different systems and platforms play a much more important role.”
Michelle says that with ACE offering 100 Gbps, this maximises the possibilities of interconnection to the internet. “This increased capacity and reach across Africa will bring a direct benefit to data-driven organisations while also supporting further development across the Internet ecosystem.”
She adds that ACE is playing a critical role in the infrastructure development of the African continent. “Using the most advanced high-speed broadband fibre-optic technology enables the cable capacity to be increased as and when needed without additional submarine work required.”
ACE was commissioned to support the cost-effective delivery of broadband services and digital applications for education, healthcare and other e-services. It reaches an estimated 410 million people, and 13 of the 16 countries connected by ACE are in Africa. The cable represents a total investment of approximately USD700 million. Latency is 145 milliseconds from Paris to Cape Town and 135 milliseconds from Lisbon to Cape Town.
