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Cape to Cairo fibre line goes live at ITU conference

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The Cape to Cairo high speed fibre network has officially gone live at the 2018 ITU Telecom World conference in Durban.

Liquid Telecom the company that started the Cape to Cairo fibre connection says its dream of a one Africa broadband has finally come true. The fibre links 600 cities and towns across 13 countries.

Liquid Africa says it is yet to sign partnerships and memorandum of understanding (MoU) with other African countries that will connect to its fibre.

In 2015 Zimbabwean based Liquid Telecom signed a MoU with Egypt to enable them to deliver the Cape to Cairo network. The network connects about 13 countries and almost 700 cities and towns in its journey.

Its CEO Reshaad Sha says going live at the ITU conference has allowed them to culminate a vision they had over the last 10 years, that of connecting the whole of Africa.

Sha says high speed broadband connectivity in will improve economic and trade conditions in many cities across the continent.

“This roll out of infrastructure which was basically a high speed fibre network allows us to connect key cities across the continent to our network, thus enabling us the first of its kind, a terrestrial network connecting from the Southernmost tip of the continent to Cairo itself,” says Sha.

He says his company’s network followed the path of existing infrastructure with their fibre running alongside, roads railways and even power lines.

The company says it will continue to seek partnerships to expand their fibre. They are currently working on building network partnerships with West Africa.

“The specific approach that we have taken has been one where we are building our own network by extending our existing footprint, we also use the partnership approach and that made us use existing networks where possible and connect that to our network. The partnership with Telecom Egypt is exactly that where we connect into the Egyptian network in Sudan and in partnership with Telecom Egypt, extend our footprint all the way to Cairo,” adds Sha.

Liquid Telecom is directly present in nine of the 13 African countries. The network covers 10 000 km between Cape Town in South Africa and Cairo in Egypt and spans more than 60 000 km of broadband fibre.

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