Connecting Africa to the network
As it has a highly dispersed population, Africa has long relied on satellite communications, which are expensive but tailored to its specific needs. As such, network infrastructure has been somewhat slow to develop on the continent. The gap is narrowing now that mobile telephony and access to the Internet are becoming more widespread.
Cabling projects, as part of a long-term strategy
In Africa, the lack of a local fixed network has long resulted in a relatively low level of long-distance communications transmission infrastructure.
As such, an entire infrastructure now needs to be deployed:
- radio towers,
- undersea cables to provide international communications.
“A need that is essential today with the deployment of the Internet,” stresses Yves Bellego, Director of network strategy at Orange. “This work constitutes a significant, complex, and costly milestone: it must thus be sustainable. Therefore, the cables that are used are primarily optical fibers or very high-capacity undersea cables, which have an average lifespan of 10 years. Only the equipment placed on each end is scalable. Their initial capacity may be 10 GB, which can then be increased to 100 GB…”.
Once such cabling is put in place, the impact for users and the local economy is immediate. For example, Madagascar and Mayotte were connected two years ago, which has made it possible to provide more people with access to the Internet and optimize the quality of service: “Before laying these cables, international calls were transmitted by satellites, which meant there was a delay between the voices of the two speakers, just like it was in France 30 years ago,” explains Yves Bellego.
Progressive upgrades since 2010
Connecting Africa to the Internet remains a lengthy process. In 2010, sub-Saharan Africa represented 0.2% of the world’s total bandwidth… a percentage which had not changed since 2004! Within a few months, however, the installation of many undersea cables has provided increased bandwidth and improved reliability, at an incomparable cost.
By deploying these very high speed infrastructures using optical fibers, it was possible to divide the cost of connectivity by 7 in some African countries. Then, in late 2015, another major step was taken with the commissioning of the ACE (Africa Coast to Europe) submarine cable: 17,000 km of optical fiber serving the entire length of the continent’s Atlantic coast, laid by a consortium led by Orange and its local subsidiaries (Ivory Coast Telecom, Orange Cameroon, Orange Mali, Orange Niger and Sonatel, etc.).
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