Several companies have teamed to up to build what is described as one of the largest subsea projects in the world to connect 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

The new 37 000-km-long 2Africa subsea cable plans to interconnect Europe eastward through Egypt and the Middle East through Saudi Arabia, with 21 landings in 16 countries across Africa, and is expected to go live in 2023/24.

The system will boast more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables currently serving Africa, with a design capacity of up to 180 Tb/s on key parts of the system.

A consortium comprising China Mobile International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC have appointed Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) to build the cable in a fully funded project.

“2Africa will deliver much needed Internet capacity and reliability across large parts of Africa, supplement the fast-growing capacity demand in the Middle East and underpin the further growth of fourth-generation, fifth-generation and fixed-broadband access for hundreds of millions of people,” the parties said in a joint statement.

In countries where the 2Africa cable will land, service providers will obtain capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.

The 2Africa cable has been designed to improve resilience and maximise performance, including the option of a seamless optical crossing between East Africa and Europe.

“The 2Africa parties and Airtel have signed an agreement with Telecom Egypt to provide a completely new crossing linking the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, the first in over a decade.”

This includes new cable landing stations and the deployment of next-generation fibre on two new, diverse terrestrial routes parallel to the Suez Canal from Ras Ghareb to Port Said, and a new subsea link that will provide a third path between Ras Ghareb and Suez.

The 2Africa cable will implement ASN’s new technology SDM, which allows the deployment of up to 16 fibre pairs instead of the eight fibre pairs supported by older technologies, and incorporate optical switching technology to enable flexible management of bandwidth.

Cable burial depth has also been increased by 50% compared with older systems, and cable routing will avoid locations of known subsea disturbance to ensure the highest levels of availability.