Paratus and Telecom Namibia have agreed to land subsea cable, Equiano, in Namibia. This move is expected to provide Namibian networks with greater capacity, stimulate economic growth and support a competitive telecommunication sector.
“This is a major milestone for Paratus,” says Paratus Group CEO, Barney Harmse. “We are honoured to be co-investing with Telecom Namibia on the Equiano subsea cable project because this matches our goals of delivering unlimited connectivity and building Africa’s quality network with all the Internet capacity it needs.”
In 2019, Google first announced its subsea cable project would connect Africa with Europe, running along the west coast of Africa, between Portugal and South Africa. The Equiano cable incorporates new technology that enables approximately 20 times more network capacity than the last cable built to serve this region and provides flexibility to add and reallocate capacity in different locations as needed.
“This collaboration affirms that strategic partnerships between local network providers will greatly promote economic growth and digital transformation, while accelerating Namibia’s participation in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. We are very proud to be an investor in the Namibian branch,” says Telecom Namibia CEO, Stanley Shanapinda.
The co-operation between Paratus and Telecom Namibia reflects the spirit and objectives of the Communications Act, as envisioned by the government.
“This is important for Namibia. It is part of our ongoing commitment to connecting the Namibian people with faster, more reliable Internet connections,” adds Shanapinda. “We will experience, first-hand, the positive impact this increased capacity and redundancy will have on our country and our economy.”
“We have numerous points of presence (PoPs) internationally and we will continue to enhance routing diversity between these PoPs to minimise loss of traffic in the event of a failure on any of the submarine cables. It is crucial to highlight that Telecom Namibia does not only carry local traffic, but we ensure Internet connectivity for various landlocked countries in the SADC region.”
Harmse concludes, “there is a critical requirement to ensure that our network is strengthened with diverse routes across Africa to minimise the impact of any single upstream network dependency”.
The Namibian landing station is scheduled to be completed in the latter part of 2021, with the Equiano cable expected to land in the second half of 2022.
