Pan-African telecommunications company, Paratus has completed a new terrestrial crossing to Mozambique by lighting up a 750km route from Maputo, through Eswatini onwards to Teraco Isando DC in Johannesburg, which is one of Paratus’ many international colocation centres.

Says Rolf Mendelsohn, Chief Technical Officer of the Paratus Group: “It has taken months of meticulous planning and we experienced significant delays due to the pandemic sweeping across the globe. This week, we were able to commence with link testing and the first live traffic traversed the link. Prior to activating this shorter route, the majority of traffic to Maputo would need to go via Mtinzini on either the SEACOM or EASSY cable systems. Latency is halved from 18ms to 9ms. For this route we decided to deploy the latest Infinera coherent technology, operating at 100Gb wavelengths.”

Barney Harmse, Chief Executive Officer of the Paratus Group added: “This is once again testament of our commitment to invest in Africa and we continue to do so under strenuous economic circumstances. The COVID pandemic has placed tremendous pressure on various economies and we simply cannot allow this to stand in the way of development of Africa as a whole. There are no limits to growing our footprint in Africa and we are proud of what the team has achieved.”

In August 2019, Paratus was the first operator to connect the East Coast and West Coast route from the WACS cable landing station in Swakopmund, Namibia to the EASSY (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System) cable landing station in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

This route stretches across 4,160km to connect the East and West Coast of Africa under management of Paratus’ single ASN (Autonomous System number).

Mendelsohn concluded: “The team has worked tirelessly to ensure that the link is completed and once again achieved a tremendous feat by completing this under various countries’ lockdown periods. The recent launch of our second data centre in Luanda, Angola speaks to the investment alluded to by our CEO, Barney Harmse. The group is thinking big with its various infrastructure projects running simultaneously across all countries of operation and we are excited about the investment prospects in Africa.”