The first route of a 5 000 km national long-distance fibre-optic network connecting major city centres across South Africa has successfully been “lit up”, telecommunications group MTN said on Wednesday.

This followed the completion, by the National Long Distance (NLD) consortium, of 700 km of trenching between Germiston and Durban in December, said MTN SA chief technology officer Kanagaratnam Lambotharan.

The consortium, comprising MTN, Vodacom, Neotel and the South African National Road Agency, aimed to link major centres and economic hubs, as well as interconnect with international submarine cable landing sites.

The transmission system supported 400 Gb/s of traffic and was scalable to meet future requirements.

“The NLD project will positively impact business development and entrepreneurship in the country in terms of access speeds, as well as delivering the ability to circumvent some of the challenges that exist around national and last-mile connectivity,” said Lambotharan.

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