Buying Tips For The West African Coast: 2Africa & Equiano

1. Senegal is really hard because several 2African consortium members decided to exclude it from their footprint. But subsea capacity demand is significant because Dakar is a natural telecom hub due to its location along the Northwest African coast. I am working on getting a good subsea 2Africa solution for African ISPs for whom Dakar is part of their plans.

2. If you planning to lease subsea capacity into South Africa or Lagos, best to wait a few months for 2Africa to go live. The combination of 2Africa and Equiano will create a temporary glut. That's the time to strike.

3. I recommend African consortium members on the Equiano and 2Africa cables over their foreign counterparts (Trump will be complaining I am discriminating against white people😄) because they have larger metro footprints. Metro waves are extremely expensive in African cities. It is likely that you can negotiate a subsea deal with an African carrier that eliminates or sharply diminishes any metro charges. I just did it for a client in Accra. 2Africa carriers like WIOCC and Bayobab are well positioned in terms of terrestrial connectivity. I recommend Transmission CO's route protected 100Gs for Lagos connectivity. Direct service quotes to me or Mark Tinka. For Accra, Ghana, I can get you metro dark fibre. 🙂 It's a developed country delicacy very good for your operational health and well being.

4. Unfortunately, a West Coast capacity shortage is almost guaranteed long term. The 2Africa cable lacks enough capacity to keep prices low for more than a year or two. Carriers are reluctant to sell either Equiano or 2Africa IRUs, which is a clear sign they expect lean times ahead. 2Africa's initial design capacity is 180 Tbps, but a quarter is for Facebook's internal traffic. Plus I expect many ACE and WACS refugee customers migrating to 2Africa.

Map of Fibre Optic Subsea Equiano Cable

Map of Fibre Optic Subsea 2Africa Cable


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