A submarine cable running all the way from Portugal has landed in Melkbosstrand, bringing with it the promise of faster internet and lower data costs.
Cape Town telecommunications engineers welcomed the ship that lays the Google-owned Equiano cable at about 10am on Monday August 8.
A telecommunications engineer, who spoke to Tabletalk on condition of anonymity as he is not allowed to speak to the media, said they visited to observe the cable-laying operation.
He said the cable was going to be connected to a data centre.
The ship attracted curious beachgoers and Table View residents who were eager to see what was going on.
A statement by Wiocc, the company which oversaw the operation, confirmed the cable being laid was the much-anticipated 12-fibre Equiano cable belonging to Google.
According to a CNN report, the 15 000-km cable is designed to deliver high-speed broadband along the west coast of Africa and its 144-terabits-per-second capacity is 20 times that of the previous cable serving the region and could increase internet speeds more than fivefold in some countries.
Melkbosstrand Residents’ Association chairperson Smokie La Grange said the managers of the operation had informed them about the cable every step of the way.
She showed Tabletalk a record of correspondence between the ratepayers’ association and the companies laying the cable and said residents had been informed about it as far back as November 2016.
“They communicated via emails and documents (including a draft scoping report) sent to my house, and they were also placed in the public library.
“We have been aware for a long time. There are people in the community who won’t know about it because people don’t read.
“It’s fascinating stuff when you see it. This is coming from Europe to this small little town of Melkbosstrand,” Ms La Grange said.
“All the trans-Atlantic cables come here and it’s probably the safest beaching for these cables. We knew it was coming since Thursday or Friday, but it was probably waiting for Monday’s perfect weather to land on the shore.”
Wiocc Group CEO Chris Wood said: “We are extremely well positioned to provide businesses with access to fully upgradeable, quickly and easily scalable capacity throughout South Africa and into neighbouring countries, over one of the most future-proof networks in the country.”
He said the Equiano cable would be extended into a data-centre facility in Rondebosch, “where clients can interconnect with terrestrial infrastructure providers, cloud networks, partners, suppliers and other ecosystem members”.
