Telecommunications infrastructure company Seacom has upgraded its network to 100 Gigabit Ethernet technology, allowing for significantly faster speeds for partners and end-user consumers.

The 100GE speeds are only available in South Africa for now, but will be expanded to other markets in Africa in which the company operates, it said on Monday.

Seacom launched the first submarine cable system on the east coast of Africa in July 2009. In 2014, it moved to 10G transit routers and, in 2018, the company began the planning that would be required to improve South Africa’s network infrastructure with 100GE capabilities.

“The increased capacity of 100Gbit/s equipment reduces the cost and complexity associated with procuring and maintaining multiple 10Gbit/s ports and also simplifies load balancing through the flexibility of having 10 times more bandwidth per port,” Seacom said in a statement.

“Network providers will be able to add more customers, expand their networks, or reconfigure traffic flows without disrupting network traffic or incurring multiple cross-connecting fees.”