Pan-African telecoms group, Liquid Telecom, and Egypt telecom operator, Telecom Egypt have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) enabling the former to shortly complete Africa’s terrestrial fibre network, spanning from Cape Town, South Africa, to Cairo, Egypt.
Under the memorandum, Liquid Telecom will link its network from Sudan into Telecom Egypt’s network via a new cross border interconnection – bringing together a 60,000km network that runs from Cape Town, through all the Southern, Central, and Eastern African countries, and has now reached the border between Sudan and Egypt.
The Cape to Cairo network - often referred to as ‘the One Africa’ broadband network - has been in the making for over ten years and serves some of the largest global companies with some of the fastest network speeds on the continent. Under the partnership, both parties will share network infrastructure and explore further areas of collaboration, including joint network services, a peering arrangement and a voice interconnection agreement.
‘This network not only represents a remarkable engineering achievement that has overcome some of the most challenging distances and terrains on the continent, but it is also supporting the rise of Africa’s digital economies, said Strive Masiyiwa, founder and executive chairman of Econet, Liquid Telecom’s parent company.
Masiyiwa also observed that: ‘Wherever the One Africa network has been completed we have seen dramatic increase of data traffic between nations connected to it. We expect to see a lot of traffic between Egypt and the rest of Africa.’
Added Ahmed El Beheiry, Telecom Egypt’s managing director and chief executive officer: ‘This MoU is a great step in our strategy to penetrate the African market and avail Telecom Egypt’s most advanced technology and global infrastructure services to customers across Africa. We look forward to working alongside Liquid Telecom to develop new network services and products that will help stimulate intra-regional trade.’
