2Africa Extended to The Arabian Gulf, Pakistan and India

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach
– 28 September 2021 – The 2Africa consortium, comprised of China Mobile
International, Facebook, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc, Telecom Egypt,
Vodafone and WIOCC, announced today the addition of a new segment – the 2Africa
PEARLS branch – extending to the Arabian Gulf, Pakistan and into India. This
extension will bring the total length of the 2Africa cable system to over
45,000 kilometers, making it the longest subsea cable system ever deployed.

Now connecting three continents, Africa, Europe and Asia terrestrially through Egypt, 2Africa creates unique
connectivity by adding vital landing locations in Oman (Barka), UAE (Abu Dhabi
and Kalba), Qatar (Doha), Bahrain (Manama), Kuwait (Kuwait), Iraq (Al-Faw),
Pakistan (Karachi), India (Mumbai), and a fourth landing in Saudi Arabia (Al
Khobar). The new 2Africa PEARLS branch joins recently announced extensions to
the Canary Islands, the Seychelles, Comoros Islands, Angola, and a new landing
to south-east Nigeria.

As with other 2Africa cable landings, capacity will be available in
PEARLS landings at carrier-neutral facilities or open-access cable landing
stations on a fair and equitable basis, encouraging and supporting the
development of a healthy internet ecosystem. 

To further support a burgeoning global digital economy, the expanded
system will serve an even wider range of communities that rely on the internet
for services from education to healthcare, and businesses, providing economic
and social benefits that come from increased connectivity. As announced in May
2020, 2Africa was planned to directly bring seamless international connectivity
to 1.2 billion people. Today, with 2Africa PEARLS, 2Africa will be providing
international connectivity to an additional 1.8 billion people–that’s 3
billion people, representing 36% of the global population.

Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) will deploy the new system utilizing
new technologies such as SDM that allow the deployment of up to 16 fiber pairs,
double that of older technologies and bringing greater and more cost-effective
capacity.

According to China Mobile International (CMI), extending the 2Africa
cable system to bring international connectivity to more people in Africa, the
Middle East and Asia helps deliver on its vision of driving intelligent digital
transformation. CMI continues to invest in the Arabian Gulf region, and the new
2Africa PEARLS branch is an important addition to its network further
connecting its PoPs around the Arabian Sea to its digital infrastructure to
Europe and Asia. Together with the London and Frankfurt data centers launched
earlier, CMI’s resources has built a superhighway, ensuring the capacity as
well as the service quality to address the increased bandwidth demand driving
by 5G and digitalization, between Europe-Africa-middle East-Asia.

#2Africa