OADC chief development officer Darren Bedford.

Following Africa’s west coast subsea cable outages, WIOCC Group has restored major ISP and IP transit provider services onto the Equiano cable.

Following a suspected rock fall in the Congo Canyon, the WACS, SAT-3 and ACE subsea cables have been damaged, disrupting the services of many Southern African connectivity providers.

To fix the problem, WIOCC, a digital infrastructure company, announced today that it was able to move its clients' traffic onto its full fibre pair on the Equiano cable.

The Equiano undersea cable, which was officially inaugurated in September 2022, connects Portugal with various countries down the west coast of Africa before finally landing in South Africa. The cable was entirely funded by Google.

The line consists of 12 fibre pairs with a total capacity of 144Tbps, with each Equiano fibre pair delivering 12Tbps. 

According to WIOCC, each fibre pair has nearly as much capacity as the entire WACS undersea cable.

"WIOCC has been working with many of South Africa's leading ISPs and IP Transit providers to get their services running smoothly on Equiano in the wake of the cable breaks," the business adds.

According to WIOCC, it has also assisted many other key players in the business – who were not previously clients – in quickly restoring their connectivity services, thanks to the available redundancy.

"As a strategic investor in the major subsea cables serving Africa, we always carry extra capacity for these scenarios," said Darren Bedford, WIOCC Group's chief business development officer. "We take pride in being able to migrate ISPs and IP Transit companies to Equiano in a single day."