MTN has officially completed its Coastal National Long Distance (NLD) fibre cable project.
The fibre route starts in Cape Town, and runs along the N2, moves through Gqeberha and East London and then on to Durban. It is expected to offer an exciting alternative to existing fibre networks and older, slower options and covers an impressive 1,822 kms while supporting several other sites.
“The project gives MTN an opportunity to provide additional and significant capacity between coastal cities and the rest of SA, ensuring the digital world is brought one step closer for many more people,” says Giovanni Chiarelli, CIO at MTN SA.
The NLD 5/6 project commenced over 3 years ago, constructed by Liquid Telecoms (Liquid Intelligent Technologies), with MTN as the key anchor investor. Apart from the benefits of fast, secure and stable connectivity, more capacity and high speeds, the NLD also forms part of the broader initiative by MTN to modernise its entire network in SA to ensure it is future-ready and geared for a fourth industrial revolution and 5G future.
Chiarelli adds, “NLD 5/6 will enable us to deploy fibre-related connectivity to a wider SA population, particularly to previously disadvantaged rural and township communities. This is an addition to ACE (East Africa cable) and WACS (West Africa) cable projects that MTN Group is already driving as a key partner”.
Closing connectivity gaps remains a challenge across large swathes of sub-Saharan Africa and the completion of this initiative will help connect the unconnected. The NLD will therefore serve as a major enabler of closing gaps in network coverage while providing current and future required capacity; which has kept so many people, businesses and communities disconnected from the benefits of the modern, digital world.
“The work does not stop now, with future network requirements including new technologies such as Segment Routing for efficient routing and network computational resource usage,” concludes Chiarelli.
