The Europe India Gateway (EIG) undersea cable system is live and ready for commercial use. The cable will provide additional capacity to North Africa and provide an alternative route for telecommunications traffic for SA operators.
A consortium of 16 operators from the Middle East and Africa, including Telkom and MTN, funded the US$700m system. India’s Bharti Airtel will manage the networking on the cable.
The 15 000km system runs from Mumbai in India to London and has landing points in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Monaco, France, Gibraltar and Portugal.
Bharti says apart from the segment in Egypt, the cable, which has a design capacity of 3,84Tbit/s, is ready for commercial operation.
The system has been designed to provide an alternative to the Sea-Me-We 4 cable system, which follows a similar route to EIG and provides onward connectivity to other cables including the Seacom system that services Kenya and SA along Africa’s east coast.
EIG is meant to complement the East African Submarine System (Eassy), which went live late last year. Bharti, Telkom and MTN are also investors in Eassy.
Other members of the EIG consortium include AT&T, BT Group, Bharat Sanchar Nigam, Cable & Wireless Worldwide, Verizon and Telecom Egypt. — Candice Jones, TechCentral
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