Paratus links Africa coast to coast
12 August 2019 | Business
Paratus recently pushed the envelope by extending the Trans – Kalahari fibre network 4 160 kilometres east to connect to the West Africa Cable System in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The route is under one single Autonomous System Number (ASN), a feat that has been eluding most African operators.
The fibre network interconnects with selected operators in various countries en route to ensure reliability in the overall management of the fibre network across the continent.
Paratus Group chief operating officer Schalk Erasmus said the project is part of Paratus Africa's aggressive infrastructure expansion strategy with Nimbus Infrastructure.
Paratus started with construction of the cable route from Windhoek to Swakopmund in 2017 and at the end of April 2018, completed the second-phase route from Windhoek to the Botswana border.
Part of the capital used for this project through Namibia was funded by Nimbus Infrastructure.
“This is a huge milestone and also a massive achievement. We can now deliver WACS capacity to landlocked countries in which we have operational branches, including Botswana and Zambia,” he said.
Operators on both the east and west coast of Africa are dependent on undersea cable access and when outages occur, are mostly reliant on alternative cables on the same side of the continent.
Erasmus said this new route would allow operators to think differently about their requirements for diverse routes within and around the African continent.
“Paratus Africa will continue to extend fibre routes with own infrastructure builds in order to maintain uptime, reliability and scalability to its clients, should there be any degradation in service levels,” Erasmus said.
“We believe that the fibre-optic network provides high-quality reliability and scalability with high access speeds to contend with the demand on bandwidth.
“We certainly want to take advantage of the countless opportunities in Africa and we're therefore engaging other landlocked nations to leverage our fibre backbone and WACS capacity,” he added.
STAFF REPORTER
The route is under one single Autonomous System Number (ASN), a feat that has been eluding most African operators.
The fibre network interconnects with selected operators in various countries en route to ensure reliability in the overall management of the fibre network across the continent.
Paratus Group chief operating officer Schalk Erasmus said the project is part of Paratus Africa's aggressive infrastructure expansion strategy with Nimbus Infrastructure.
Paratus started with construction of the cable route from Windhoek to Swakopmund in 2017 and at the end of April 2018, completed the second-phase route from Windhoek to the Botswana border.
Part of the capital used for this project through Namibia was funded by Nimbus Infrastructure.
“This is a huge milestone and also a massive achievement. We can now deliver WACS capacity to landlocked countries in which we have operational branches, including Botswana and Zambia,” he said.
Operators on both the east and west coast of Africa are dependent on undersea cable access and when outages occur, are mostly reliant on alternative cables on the same side of the continent.
Erasmus said this new route would allow operators to think differently about their requirements for diverse routes within and around the African continent.
“Paratus Africa will continue to extend fibre routes with own infrastructure builds in order to maintain uptime, reliability and scalability to its clients, should there be any degradation in service levels,” Erasmus said.
“We believe that the fibre-optic network provides high-quality reliability and scalability with high access speeds to contend with the demand on bandwidth.
“We certainly want to take advantage of the countless opportunities in Africa and we're therefore engaging other landlocked nations to leverage our fibre backbone and WACS capacity,” he added.
STAFF REPORTER
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