Africa's Non-Existent Subsea Resiliency - Fixing It

Obviously the new Equiano and 2Africa cables will dramatically improve African network reliabilty. In fact, Equiano provided a huge amount of restoration capacity for Internet backbones that lost European connectivity during the four cable outage off Abidjan this past spring. As long as the network operator could get their traffic to Lagos or South Africa, they could get hop onto Equiano and reach Europe. 

Long term there are two primary ways to create a more resilient pan-African network. The Continent needs large fibre optic interstate highways connecting countries. The challenge is that most landlocked African states have not truly liberalized their markets to allow internal competition, foreign ownership or even cross border fibre ownership. Landline monopoly is the rule in these countries. For example, today, the only way to link Burkino Faso fibre to its Ivory Coast counterpart is via a border cross connect. There is no cross border fibre ownership permitted. This is a serious drawback. A single network like Colt, RETN, EXA or EUNetworks can connect Western European data centres regardless of political jurisdiction. There are no border cross connects, but rather seamless integrated fibre trunks connecting Amsterdam to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Zurich, and so on. In my example, the African model implemented in Europe would require contracting with the national Dutch monopoly operator to provide an Amsterdam circuit to the border and also contracting with the national German monopoly operator to deliver a Frankfurt circuit to the border and then somehow get the two carriers to cross connect on a patch panel. Prices would be crazy high, delivery very slow, and circuit performance probably poor due to the lack of a single party responsible for monitoring and troubleshooting. Prices would be high not just due to monopoly, but also the extra DWDM equipment required for multiplexing at the border. 

My second recommendation is that African coastal states agree to fundamental rules governing subsea permits. 

  • Cables must avoid geologically active areas like the subsea canyons. 
  • Sea lanes restricted to subsea cables to protect them. 
  • All cables must be buried 1.5 to 2 meters deep. 
  • All cables must terminate at carrier neutral data centers. 
  • All cable landing stations must treat all clients equally with performance standards and cost-based pricing. No landing rights. No exorbitant cross charges 
  • Each country with more than one subsea cable should have at least two geographically diverse cable landing stations with cables distributed as evenly as possible between them. 
  • No half circuits permitted. Any capacity ownership must be duplex.
  • Submarine capacity should be made available to anyone who wants to buy it. No licensing requirement to be a fibre optic carrier. States can have licensing requirements to provide end user services, but dark fibre or Layer 1 services would be unregulated. This sends the right message to the market place. 
  • If nearby carrier neutral data centers exist, the subsea cable landing station is placed in such a facility. Standalone CLS should be the last resort. 
  • Only competitive wholesale-only carriers can manage cable landing stations and carrier neutral POPs. Subject as always to the principle of equal and fair treatment for all as well as cost-based pricing for CLS services. 
Map of Africa's Fibre Optic Subsea Cables


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