2Africa will only start operating in the second quarter of 2024

The submarine cable 2Africa Operated by Unitel, it will only start operating in the second quarter of 2024, announced the CEO of the national operator, Miguel Geraldes, who was speaking during the round table at Expansão's VI telecom forum.

According to the official, the submarine cable will bring connectivity of 25 terabits per second, while the country as a whole consumes a maximum of 300 bits per second.

"We are making an investment that has a capacity of almost 100 times more than what we have here today“, he said, addressing the topic “The Challenges of Infrastructure, Financing and New Digital Concepts”.

Coming from London, 2Africa is a product that results from a consortium between Vodafone, WIOCC, China Mobile Internacional, MTN, Orange, Telecom Egypt, STC, Meta (the company responsible for Facebook and Whatsapp) and Unitel. The project's mission is to increase the capacity, quality and availability of Internet connections between the three continents.

Thus, the business opportunity led Unitel to invest around 50 million USD in connecting to the 2Africa submarine cable, one of the largest in the world, managed by an international consortium that involves dozens of companies in several countries.

In addition to internal traffic, the country's largest telecommunications operator also intends to capture new business with fiber optic connections that connect Angola with Zambia and Botswana, countries that do not have access to the sea and, for this reason, to submarine cables. directly.

At 45.000 km long, 2Africa is the longest cable in the world and will connect 33 countries, with 46 mooring points across Africa, Europe and Asia. Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) is responsible for manufacturing and deploying the 16-pair optical fiber cable.

2Africa arrived in Luanda at the end of July this year. Mooring point is located in Cacuaco and opens new perspectives for contracting international telecommunications traffic to the operator Unitel, which made the investment and thus becomes a competitor of Angola Cables.

Luanda is also a landing point for the 3 SAT-2002/WASC cable, which connects South Africa to Spain and Portugal. Further south, Sangano is the landing point for the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) and West Africa Cable System cable systems.
(WACS), launched in 2018 and 2012, respectively.