Pan-African technology group Liquid Intelligent Technologies has acquired a fibre pair on the Equiano subsea cable that will enable it to transport traffic up to 12 Tb/s.

Liquid, which aims to address the growing need for Internet capacity supporting cloud services in both coastal and landlocked countries across Africa, plans to interconnect the Equiano landing stations to its East-West network across Africa, creating a new global Internet Protocol route between Asia, Africa and the US.

The new Equiano subsea cable will link Africa to Europe through the West Coast of Africa when it is ready for service later in 2022.

The Equiano subsea cable has landings planned in Sesimbra in Portugal; Lomé in Togo; Lagos in Nigeria; Swakopmund in Namibia; Rupert’s Bay in Saint Helena; and Melkbosstrand in South Africa, with more landing stations planned in the future.

“Liquid’s investment in Equiano will help provide seamless connectivity for its clients across Africa, complementing its own existing national and metropolitan fibre networks and offering increased resilience thanks to its connection to other subsea and satellite networks,” said Liquid Dataport CEO David Eurin.

The deployment will bring the benefit of access to large capacities and low costs to cross-connect from subsea to terrestrial backhaul, which should lead to lower prices for both consumers and businesses.

Through its extensive fibre backbone and satellite services, Liquid offers reliable telecommunications and cloud services to over 1.3-billion people across thousands of towns and cities in Africa.

“In the last few years, we have witnessed a steady increase in adoption of digital technologies. This would not have been possible without our investments in high-speed connectivity in coastal as well as landlocked African countries,” he said.

“The continent needs companies like Liquid who not only land Tb/s of capacity with subsea cables but also distribute that capacity inland, enabling these countries to see the same benefits as those where the cable lands.”

The new capacity extends Liquid’s One Africa Digital Network’s reach into Africa, providing connectivity to large data centres on the continent while granting access to major commercial hubs.