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Two major operators, Orange and Liquid Telecom, as well as another consortium have deployed first
international terrestrial fiber networks on the continent.
This is a first for Orange in Africa. The group announced the creation of an international network of
fiber optic, baptized “Bafo” (African Fiber Optic Backbone). It will connect eight countries in the West of the continent
where the tricolor operator is active, and in particular the major regional capitals (Dakar, Bamako, Abidjan,
Accra…). Orange has been working on the project for a year and expects to be able to market this
network, i.e. selling to third parties the bandwidth it will not use - even if the reason
first step in the development of this infrastructure is to meet its own needs: to improve the
speeds and latency, particularly in landlocked countries in the area such as Mali or Burkina Faso, which do not
are not connected to submarine cables from the coast, and secure connections with alternative routes
in the event of a cable problem.
A first East-West link
This project, in which Orange is investing several hundred million euros, is the first of its kind in
West Africa. It echoes two major networks developed in the East. The Wiocc, co-owned by 14
operators on the continent, which meshes the South-East point, from Johannesburg to Nairobi. And the One Africa network of
Zimbabwean Liquid Telecom which runs 70,000 km, taking a slightly more central route to
join Cape Town to Cairo via the Great Lakes region.
A sign of the current enthusiasm, Liquid Telecom has just announced that it has established the first fiber link
optic linking the East and West of the continent, crossing the Democratic Republic of Congo over 2,600 km
to reach the Atlantic.
These investments are necessary for operators if they want to develop digital services
on the continent. Liquid Telecom, which connects Microsoft's two data centers in South Africa,
relies heavily on this infrastructure to boost the use of the American giant's cloud services and,
by extension, its income. Betting on terrestrial fiber networks has also become a smart fallback, both
exploitation of submarine cables by operators is doomed to collapse with the arrival of
infrastructures of Google and Facebook to the African coasts. Telecom operators want to believe
that the American giants will not venture into the deployment on land, even if Google has posed
some milestones. Apart from its Loon balloon project which it is testing in Kenya, the Mountain View group
is part of a joint venture called "CSquared" which has pulled 2,000 km of fiber in Uganda, Ghana and
Liberia.
A worrying first step? "Operator is a profession, particularly in Africa", reassures Jean-Luc
Vuillemin, director of international networks at Orange. “And the earth fiber is regulated. But there are two
things that scare a Gafa: another Gafa and a regulator. »