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| Facebook is building submarine cables for the Middle East and Africa |
Facebook works with a number of telecom companies, including China (China Mobile), South Africa (MTN), France (Orange), the United Kingdom (Vodafone) and Saudi Arabia (STC) and Egyptian telecom companies are implementing a project called (2Africa). The most complete submarine cable for Africa and the Middle East.
This new cable connects East Africa with other submarine cables to expand contact with Asia and has seen the company's operation extend the cable to more than 37,000 km. These cables connect Europe (from east to Egypt), the Middle East (via Saudi Arabia), 16 African countries and one of the largest marine cable projects in the world.
The Nokia Cable Systems marine cable network has been contracted to manufacture submarine cables that will greatly improve connectivity in Africa and the Middle East. Facebook claims that the cable will roughly correspond to the Earth's circumference and that Facebook and its information partners will not set aside any amount. Create a project.
Facebook said the main goal of the initiative is to improve communication with the African continent. The company wrote in a blog that the continent is currently the world's least networked country in the world. More than a quarter of its population accesses the internet and connects submarine cables. 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
The social networking giant explained that the cables provide nearly three times the network capacity of all submarine cables serving Africa today, and that its design capacity is 180 terabytes per second. The project uses (2Africa) aluminum. This does not mean that fiber optic cables are becoming more efficient, which helps to increase network capacity.
The (2Africa) project is expected to start work in 2023 or early 2024, and the (2Africa) and (Airtel) parties have signed an agreement with Telecom Egypt to provide a new border point between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean necklace.
Facebook said: "The (2Africa) project is a continuation of our continuous efforts to expand the infrastructure of the global network. We have worked with partners around the world to build many of the leading marine optical cables in terms of access, capacity and flexibility."
The new cable underscores Silicon Valley's growing interest in African companies as a high-growth investment opportunity. Twitter CEO said last year that he was planning to move to the region, despite being forced to reassess the situation due to the Coruna virus epidemic. Ambition.
Google is also searching for a submarine cable called (Equiano) connecting Africa to Europe, and the search giant has a high-altitude balloon manufacturing division (Loon) to supply 4G internet communities with rural areas, and recently announced the development plan for Mozambique.
According to research firm TeleGeography, Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon now own or rent nearly half of the underwater bandwidth. Google alone supports at least 14 cables worldwide.
At the end of 2018, the Chinese company Huawei covered a 6,035 km cable between Brazil and Cameroon and started developing 12,070 km of cables connecting Europe, Asia and Africa last year.