A new fibre optic link connecting Angola and DRC has gone live, bringing high speed internet to cities and towns along the 600km route.

Paratus Group’s Internet Technologies Angola (ITA) said on Monday that completion of the link will boost internet connectivity for the region - including municipalities such as Nzeto, Tomboco and Mbanza, as well as the DRC province of Zaire.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies is also linking up areas in the DRC to high speed fibre internet after laying 5000km of fibre connectivity in the country.

Kinshasa, the capital whose population has grown to about 17 million, is among the hubs connected by the new link.

The cost of connecting to the internet is expected to drop as a result of the multi-fibre optic links that are being developed to link up the DRC.

“Fibre delivers high speed and reduced latency through a quality connection to the business community. The other key benefit is affordability because, for a comparable satellite connection delivering high bandwidth and speeds, fibre is actually around 70% cheaper,” said ITA managing director, Francisco Pinto Leite.

The launch of the Angola to DRC fibre optic link is expected to be followed by “more links between Angola and neighbouring countries,” said Rolf Mendelsohn, Chief Technology Officer for Paratus Group.

Paratus said last week that it had invested over US$6-million in independent fibre connectivity in Botswana “as a seamless add-on to its existing IT infrastructure” backbone It added that fibre connectivity to the internet would help give businesses in the African country “unmatched uptime via a quality connection, and particularly at a time when network capacity is under pressure” due to remote working.

In June, satellite ISP Intelsat deepened its coverage of internet in the DRC through its Cell Backhaul platform. The Intelsat Backhaul service is expected to “extend coverage to more people in the DRC” with “any cell tower anywhere in the DRC” now able to be connected.