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title: WIOCC and Ciena aiming for a fibre first on Equiano cable - Developing Telecoms
description: WIOCC, a provider of digital connectivity and infrastructure across Africa, says it is working with networking systems, services and software company Ciena to become the first operator to activate a fibre pair on Google's Equiano subsea cable.
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date: 2022-11-07T19:01:00Z
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WIOCC, a provider of digital connectivity and infrastructure across Africa, says it is working with networking systems, services and software company Ciena to become the first operator to activate a fibre pair on Google's Equiano subsea cable.

Running a total of 15,000km from Portugal along the African west coast, Equiano will be one of the largest cables serving Africa, with 12 fibre pairs delivering a total of 144Tbps of capacity. WIOCC is a key investor in Equiano, owning a full fibre pair on the system in addition to submarine line terminal equipment (SLTE) from Ciena.

 

WIOCC says that working with Ciena makes it possible for it to move rapidly in activating and then adding to its capacity to meet expanding demand for connectivity in South Africa, Nigeria and neighboring countries. Spectrum sharing is supported across the network, allowing WIOCC to broaden its service portfolio.

Chris Wood, WIOCC Group CEO, says: “Not only has this \[collaboration\] allowed us to pre-install our SLTE in Open Access Data Centre (OADC) facilities in Lagos, Nigeria, and Rondebosch, South Africa – meaning we’ll be able to light up our capacity as soon as the Equiano system goes live – but it’s also optimized budget utilization, enabling us to invest further in other parts of our network.”

WIOCC is also teaming up with Ciena on the new 2Africa submarine cable, on which it owns a fibre pair across the system.

WIOCC says it is deploying Ciena’sGeoMesh Extreme Solution, which leverages the6500 Reconfigurable Line System (RLS), WaveLogic 5 Extremecoherent optics andManage, Control and Plan (MCP)domain controller.Ciena Services is providing turnkey planning, design and deployment services.

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