Equiano: The West African ISP Buyer's Guide

Equiano is a Google cable. A 12 fibre pair spatial division multiplexing system designed to do at least 12 Tbps per pair. This cable is a must-have for African ISPs as it connects the three key telecom hubs of Portugal (Lisbon Equinix (LS1)), Nigeria (the Open Access Data Center (OADC) in Lagos), and South Africa (Capetown Teraco (CT1) in South Africa), has massive capacity and is vastly more reliable than older African cables. 

Equiano not only connects the key telecom hubs essential to West Africa's Internet, but is also buried two meters deep and avoids the dangerous undersea areas like the Congo canyon and Le Trou Sans Fin that have caused many subsea outages. Le Trou experienced a debris slide this Spring that caused 4 African cables (SAT3, Mainone, WACS, and ACE) to be severed in the Ivory Coast's territorial waters. Equiano saved West Africa's Internet from a complete subsequent meltdown as its capacity was used to reroute traffic to Lisbon or South Africa. Equiano's relatively simple network design reduces the chance of outages vis-a-vis the much more complicated 2Africa cable with its 40 plus landings or other systems like ACE that have many landings in poor countries with very weak infrastructure. Certainly, Equiano cannot replace cables like ACE because the former has only four African countries on-net, but it is ideal for restoration. For example, if a cable like ACE is cut somewhere above Nigeria, the traffic can be rerouted down to Nigeria and then up to Lisbon via Equiano. Or if WACS is cut between Nigeria and South Africa, then its traffic can be rerouted back down to South Africa and then ride Equiano up to Nigeria or Portugal. 

Equiano 100G market pricing for Lisbon-to-Lagos and Lagos-to-Capetown lies between $20K and $28K MRC for one year contracts. I suspect cut throat buyers like Hurricane Electric are in the upper teens. This pricing is strictly from on-net data center to on-net data center; no cross connects or local loops are included. Most 10G wave deals fall into the $4K MRC to $7K MRC range for the same end points. I have little data on Portugal-to-South Africa transaction pricing. My guess would be upper twenties to upper thirties on 1 year terms. 

Hand Off Data Centers

  1. Lisbon: LS1 Equinix. 
  2. Lagos: Open Access Data Centre (OADC).
  3. Capetown: CT1 Teraco. 

Performance Details:

  1. Lagos/Capetown Teraco: 62 ms RTD. 
  2. Lisbon/Capetown:109 ms RTD.
  3. Lagos/Lisbon: 57 ms RTD. 
Potential Throughput Using Current Technology:
  1. Lisbon/Lagos Fibre Pair: 24 Tbps. 
  2. Lisbon/Capetown FP: 16 Tbps.
  3. Lagos/Capetown FP: 18 Tbps. 
Providers:
  1. Transmission Co. A Lagos metro ring that I represent on the sales side. 
  2. China Mobile.
  3. China Unicom. 
  4. Bharti Airtel. 
  5. Bayobab.
  6. WIOCC.
  7. Orange. 
  8. A bunch of smaller players. Google sold capacity to a wide variety of African carriers including regional long haul or metro players. 


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