Google’s Equiano cable to make first landing at isolated St Helena

Google’s new submarine cable system, Equiano, which will connect Africa and Europe, will make its first landfall later this week – on the remote island of St Helena in the South Atlantic.

This follows construction and deployment of the first 1 400km of trunk cable about 800km off the coast of Africa between the latitudes of Gabon and Angola.

The Equiano system will eventually provide 150Tbit/s (the design capacity) of bandwidth between South Africa and Portugal along Africa’s west coast, with landings planned for Cape Town, St Helena, Lagos and Lisbon.

This Wednesday, 25 August, the cable-laying ship Teliri is expected to call at St Helena to start laying the branch from the island back to the main trunk cable.

“This means the final success of our nearly decade-long campaign to connect St Helena and marks an historic moment for the isolated British overseas territory which, to this day, relies on a slow and unreliable satellite connection to communicate to the rest of the world,” said Christian von der Ropp, who has long campaigned for the island to be connected to the global Internet through subsea cables.

The Equiano cable system is expected to be ready for service in the second half of next year, according to the most recent updates available online.   — © 2021 NewsCentral Media