After a meeting held in Dubai on the 11th Dec 2018, the Management Committee of Africa-1 Parties convened and sealed the Construction and Maintenance Agreement (C&MA). Senior executives from global carriers and other consortium members have all inked the deal.
Connecting South Africa through the Eastern coast of Africa and from Pakistan through the Middle East all the way to Europe, the submarine cable system, spanning more than 20,000 Km shall be crossing Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea over two brand-new diversified routes. Africa-1 is to land in carrier neutral PoP’s in Marseille (France), Mombasa (Kenya) and Durban (South Africa), as well as in submarine cable stations in Sidi-Krir and Zaafarana in Egypt, Port Sudan in Sudan, Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, Djibouti City in Djibouti, Mogadishu in Somalia, Mombasa in Kenya, Mayotte, Mahajanga in Madagascar, Fujairah in UAE and Karachi in Pakistan.
AFRICA-1 offers a unique investment model that combines the cost structure of a DLS-based service, with the flexibility to route capacity as in a conventional distance-based system. Pre-agreed, preferential cross-connection charges are also included in the C&MA for AFRICA-1 investors.
Africa-1 will leverage the latest state-of-art 200G technology and will be initially equipped to accommodate several terabits from day one. Along with comprehensive interconnection with other cable systems and full Open Access at all cable landing points, Africa-1 is attractive due to its easy accessibility and the unique design of its low latency direct express route. The multi Terabit cable system is expected to be in operation in early 2021.
Source: Press Release