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TCS+ | WIOCC and 2Africa: providing an alternative to national long-distance fibre

The 2Africa submarine communications cable, which will be the longest such system in the world when it’s completed, is already helping one South African internet service provider find an alternative route for its data traffic between KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape. 2Africa’s eastern segment – known as 2Africa Gera – is largely complete, and traffic is already flowing across the section that connects Durban and Cape Town, thanks to a newly concluded agreement between 2Africa investor WIOCC Group and FirstNet Technology Services, an ISP in the First Technologies Group stable. To discuss this development and unpack it in more detail, TechCentral invited WIOCC director of sales for South Africa Carlos De Almeida and FirstNet GM Sean van Niekerk onto the TCS+ business technology podcast. In the show, De Almeida discusses the scale of the 180Tbit/s design capacity 2Africa cable, its state of readiness and WIOCC’s investment in the massive system, which, when completed, will stretch a staggering 45 000km and connect countries with a combined population of more than three billion people. De Almeida and Van Niekerk discuss: • Why FirstNet acquired capacity on 2Africa to carry network traffic between KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape – becoming the first company to do so; • Why routing via a subsea cable, rather than using traditional terrestrial long-distance routes, should mean far fewer service interruptions for FirstNet customers; • FirstNet’s focus as an ISP, and why it launched a brand called UrbanXConnect dedicated to the gaming community and their specific requirements around latency and network quality; • The reliability, speeds and latencies possible on the 2Africa cable, and why this is critical for FirstNet; and • Why, in WIOCC’s view, other ISPs could and should follow FirstNet’s lead in using the 2Africa cable for their national long-distance internet traffic. Don’t miss a fascinating discussion about a pioneering agreement.

Duration:: 22m
Broadcast on:: 01 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: aac

I'm Duncan McLeod and this is Tech Central's TCS Plus, the Business Technology Show, which is brought to you today by WYOC Group and FirstNet. I'm joined in the studio today by WYOC's Carlos De Almeida. Carlos is a director for Sales for South Africa at WYOC and he's joined in the studio today by Sean Fenikak, GM of FirstNet Technology Services, which has just concluded an interesting deal with WYOC for the supply of capacity on the new two Africa submarine cable. Gentlemen, welcome. Thank you for making the time. Thank you, Duncan. Thank you, Duncan. Good to be here. Great. Well, Carlos, sounds like a very interesting deal. I'm quite excited to learn more actually about the two Africa cable system and how that's progressing. So let's do that. But before we chat about two Africa, just tell me a bit about WYOC for our viewers and listen, as you've probably heard of the name, but perhaps I'm not aware of everything it does. Give us the quick pitch. Sure. Absolutely. The 45 second elevator speech. So WYOC stands for West Indian Ocean Cable Company and is a connectivity company. It's a carry of carriers. And our DNA is to provide connectivity and IPT services, metro services, submarine connectivity to operators. So we do not deal with the end user. So... Also only. Also only. And we only deal with partners like FirstNet, which will then take these services and onward sell them, or add and overlay their magic, they value added services on top of this infrastructure, and then position these to the end users. And those end users can be a variety of end users, can be FTTB, FTTH, can be small operators as well. So that is the connectivity side of the business. When we have the co-location business, which is open access to the center, we provide co-location power and remote hands, again, to operators. In this instance, the co-location business is open to end users, I would say the enterprise market, because there is no conflict between what the center business does and the co-location does. The business is actually separated. And clients are not forced to take one and the other. They can either take co-location business from us and stop there and bring their own connectivity of choice, or they can take co-location from us together with connectivity from WILC. Okay. So that is in a nutshell. And do you operate right across the African continent, it's not only in South Africa? So we operate right across the African country continent. We actually own a number of submarine tables around Africa, the likes of Ikyano. We have a 30% stake on wax and easy, and obviously we own Faber Pei on to Africa, yeah, bent. And the name, of course, the West Indian Ocean Cable Company comes from your origins as an investor in the easy cable, which runs along Africa's East Coast, but the business is better than today as simply WILC. Precisely. Yeah. Precisely. Okay. So in Africa, cable system, it's often associated with meta platforms because they're one of the investors and probably the most famous investor in the system. But tell us about two Africa. What is it? How did you get involved? What is your investment? It comprises of eight consortium members and obviously meta Facebook, Orange, WILC, MTN, Weatherphone, STC, Egypt, telecom, and China mobile. These are the consortium members. To Africa is the largest submarine cable ever deployed. It's a 45,000 kilometer cable. The largest cable system ever deployed. The longest cable ever deployed. It has a combined capacity of about 180 terabytes capacity. That's the design capacity. That is a design capacity. Using current technologies. Using current technology and the technology is called a space division multiplexing. I saw that. Spatial division multiplexing multiplexing multiplexing multiplexing multiplexing. Putting it on the spot here. What is that? Something to do with the way the wavelengths are split and divided up over the power pairs. Some space and obviously it's no longer just a Cartesian representation. It's beyond that. It touches 33 countries in Africa. It has 46 cable ending stations around Africa. The topology of the cable is actually circumvents the African continent. It essentially connects Africa to Asia and Europe. What is the status of the system currently? We know it's been under construction for some time. Clearly the link we're going to be talking about the link between the Western Cape and KZA today. That leg is obviously live, but where are we with the construction of the entire system? The system is live between Doynefontein in Cape Town and Djibouti. That is part of what we call the two Africa Gera. Gera stands for Great Eastern Route of Africa. Then there is two Africa West which, yes, is still under construction. We expect that to be RFS towards the end of the year 2024. So it's running up to Djibouti at this point. I think it's not yet connected through the Red Sea. No, it's not yet connected. Well, the cable is there, but it's not yet connected. Obviously we're waiting for stability so we can complete our mandate. Yeah, for sure, but fascinating investments. So first net, Sean, is your client on this leg between KZA and where did you say the landing station was? Yeah, Doynefontein, which is basically Cape Town and in Durban, more specifically among Djibouti. That's right, because you've also a landing station there, haven't you? Precisely. So among Djibouti is actually the cable landing station for two Africa. So the two Africa cable, there is a beach manhole, and then the cable runs into our data center, our open access data center in the MAMSI 30 where the SLT equipment is located and all consortium members are there. Right. So, and it is in this open access data center of a MAMSI 30 that first net technology took not just capacity, but took co-location with others as well. I understood. I'm going to get on to you in just a second, Sean, but the cable in North of Cape Town, I presume that then interconnects onward, connects onto some of the other cable systems that run up the west coast. You mentioned WACs, you mentioned Equiano. No, those are separate cables. Those are separate investments. But I presume they are, they interconnect with one another at some point. No, they don't. They don't yet. No, so, so to Africa is, you know, an independent cable, what we do, what I did say is that we've got investments on other cables, like such as WACs, easy in Equiano. Right. Right. I understood. Sean, tell me a bit about, you're from Durban, first of all, I don't often chat to guys from Durban. I'm a Durban boy myself, I grew up there, so I have a affinity for the place. Yeah. Tell me a bit about first data. Are you headquartered in Durban? Yes, yeah. First net technology services founded in 2006, part of the first technology group, which as a group company has been around forever early 80s. And yeah, so from a first net business, we're founded, I mean, head office in Durban and offering customers a variety of ISP top services from connectivity, obviously leveraging the likes of WAC, as well as voice and security and cloud-based services. But you started life as a kind of focus on business market, right, rather than consumer market. Correct. Yeah. So we aim what the SMB and enterprise type customers, and we have a lot of retail type customers on our network, which obviously are quite demanding when it comes to latency and so on. So yeah, we're traditionally an enterprise focused organization, but as we've spun off now and realized that having all of this capacity on our network goes to sleep at night when those customers go to sleep. So we've launched out the Urban Connect brand and started going into the consumer space. And yeah, so Urban X Connect is another now group company, it's their own individual entity, and are doing the consumer fabric to the home, leveraging the back of our network that is quieter in the evenings. Yeah, that makes sense. So Urban X Connect is, as I understand it, is actually focused on a specific segment of the market primarily. Primarily a consumer home user. And gamers as well. But the gamers. Gamers, right. So we're the one of the few, or if not the only ISP dedicated, two gamers. So not to say that we wouldn't take your normal average home user, but certainly the way that we built the network and the design of the network and everything that we've done from an Urban X Connect perspective is in the interest of giving the gamer. So what does that actually mean? Low latency. Low latency. Low ping times, in other words, for the games. And a solid constant experience rather than a network that sort of gears up and down and changes from day to day. Nothing worse than having the change in experience and unstable experience when trying a game. But yeah, so that was the spinoff of what we did on the back of our enterprise network. But from a first net perspective, the retail customers, the maritime customers, all of those guys that are doing these real-time transactions and yearly transactions and so on that require low latency and stability. That was what it was designed for. And of course leveraging YOCT to give us that stability specifically between KZN and Cape Town because of the terrestrial cables are often vandalized and have problems down the east coast. So, you know, moving that now after sea has brought a lot better experience and a constant experience to the customer. So, just how I'm clear on this is it really designed at connecting, say, data centers that are located in Cape Town with users who are in Durban and vice versa. Correct. So obviously, you know, customers have branch offices all over the continent or all over Southern Africa. And we're using the YOCT capacity to connect data centers and be able to establish the main pops of our network in those regions, and then we branch out from there to service the customer requirements. But yes, it's typically to connect the data centers together, and thus then being able to provide wide area network connectivity to customers that have branches in both locations. So you're live today on to Africa? Yes, we are. How are you finding the performance? It's been fantastic. So, yeah, it's only been running for about a month now. And so far, absolutely no issues with it. It's been stable. We haven't had one blip, so, yeah, a great experience thus far. We do know that these cable systems are sometimes prone, and there's two faults or two being sliced in two. And we've seen that happen an inordinate amount of times in the last few months. They were cable faults up in West Africa. They've been cable faults in the Red Sea. There was recently a cable fault or two off the coast of KZN, in fact. I believe that the system is designed further out to see it should, hopefully, touch would be better protected against that sort of thing. We don't have seismic activity off the South African coastline. But incidents do happen. If there is an incident on this cable system, what happens to your services? Do you then revert to terrestrial fire? To terrestrial, yeah. So, Warwick have offered our relationship with Warwick started a few years ago doing terrestrial services. So, you know, we also have capacity with Warwick connecting to Durbin, to Joburg, to Cape Town. And we've triangulated that in a meshed environment. So, the Africa cable adds an element of resiliency in Sydney, the primary path between Durbin and Cape Town. But it's only one leg of a multitude of connections that we have between the three main metros in country. How heavily impacted collars are terrestrial long distance fiber networks relative to subsea cables? They're more prone for having fiber cuts and power related issues because of, you know, the reasons that we're all aware of. So, more specifically, NLD 5 and 6 along the coastal route of South Africa. It's a brilliant route because it enables operators to provide a number of services along the coastal region with drop insert approach. But it depends on, obviously, the business case and, you know, what you intend to achieve at the end of the day. If you're not doing drop insert approach and collecting or distributing IPT along the coastal regions, a cable system is the best option because it connects you from A to B. It's reliable. It's very unlikely to ever be susceptible to, you know, vandalism or theft or damage from shipping lines or damage from anchoring ships. So, but those incidents still can happen. So, you know, a properly designed solution obviously requires the triangulation that you opted for and the peace of mind that you have. So, Sean, what have you actually seen switching across to Africa in terms of late-to-season speeds and that sort of thing? And have you heard any feedback from your customers? Yeah. So, you know, customers are on greater telling you when there's a problem. That's true. But no one really comes forward and says, sure, we noticed a remarkable improvement, something, you know, what happened. But yeah, we've certainly seen an improvement in the latency that we're now getting between the two facilities and urban in Cape Town. So it's opened up a whole world of opportunity now for us and the way we move data between data centers specifically for our customers that are doing private cloud with us and, you know, geographic location, backups, you know, where we're moving the data to a different region. As you know, you know, KZN has had a spate of riots and floods and things, certainly not this year, but in the last two, three years. So, you know, the customers are getting quite agitated about where does their data get backed up to. We can't have it in another facility still in the same province. We've got to move it somewhere else. And you know, getting that path now to Cape Town has opened up the ability for us to do that far more efficiently and timeously because, you know, you can't move the data over an extended period of time because it has become too old, you know, you're not keeping the relevant restore points and recovery points. So, you know, having the capacity in the lower latency has made that far more achievable for us. Yeah. Do you think, Carlos, that we'll see Joburg based internet service providers looking at this route as well at some point, or does it make more sense to go down the national fiber route from Joburg? No, absolutely. I'm pretty sure. I mean, obviously, first net, they took the bold step and they were the first ones, actually, to be on to Africa, but I'm pretty sure there will be a follow-up by other internet service providers and operators because it adds that degree of, you know, reliability and stability. It's all about a combination of routes to achieve, you know, that maximum degree of uptime that we all provide. But we'll see that the last few months have shown is so important. Precisely. Precisely. The impacts, particularly, we've seen in West Africa and East Africa in the last few months. So you're expecting a range of ISPs to sign off to Africa, to do exactly what first net is doing? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. How many landing stations does two Africa have in South Africa? Was there a plan to build one in Port Elizabeth, or am I remembering this? Yes, there is a plan to build one in Port Elizabeth, but we are not part of that project. Okay. So we only have the Duane Fontaine one, which connects directly to our open access data center in Ronda Bosch, and then obviously, among Ztoti, which is, again, the CLS for two Africa. Why did you choose a Manzam Turkey to land the cable there, by the way, most of the cables land up at Duntenzini, and I know that's because the sea is quite shallow there, and I think it's quite easy to bring the cables ashore. I presume it's a similar arrangement in the Maison Toti. I'm not sure of the technical reasons that are behind Toti, or the selection of Toti. Presumably, there was a lot of tourist-for-fiber infrastructure near your data center, already that could be pulled into that data center and then onto the undersea area. We actually tringed and built quite a lot of it. Oh, did you? Yes, we did. Okay. We did. Okay. Okay. So, from a Maison Toti, we have a terrestrial infrastructure connecting to a spherical river host, and also to another data center of ours, which is Manzam. Manzam, okay. There's a lot of data centers that have gone into that region in the last little one, actually. It's fairly particularly. Yeah. Those are edge DCs, edge data centers, which actually act as an aggregation point for operators to aggregate their traffic. They can take collocation on those edge DCs as well, but they act essentially as an aggregation point for their networks. Okay. Okay. So, ultimately, the launch of the two Africa system, the links between Cape Town and urban, what does this mean for internet users? We're talking about reliability and resilience. What does it mean for internet speeds in South Africa and also for costs? Does it drive down costs at some point? It will. So, two Africa, essentially, once fully deployed, I mean, these are statistics that I've read. Two Africa will potentially connect 3 billion people around Africa. It's all about internet and digital inclusion at the end of the day. The economists predict that this investment will bring in the region of 0.6% GDP increase in terms of dollar value for the continent of Africa. So, it's a substantial investment with substantial expectations and substantial returns as well. Yeah. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, like I mentioned before, I mean, it uses the latest technology available. So, has this immense capacity? Yeah. So, we expect good things to come out of, out of two Africa, out of this investment. We're talking 3 billion people. That's an amazing statistic. That's more than a third of the global population affected by one cable system. Assassin. It just gives you an idea of the scale of the system. But 45,000 kilometers, three continents, 33 countries, 3 billion people and 180 terabits per second. And that's using current technology, presumably the dense wave of division, multiplexing, or the spatial division, multiplexing that's that two Africa is using that will be improved over time as well. One made you figure could, in fact, double or triple of the time. If anyone wants to learn more about YOC, Carlos, what is the website? YOC.net. YOC.net. YOC. You wish you a first thing. So, I want to see your address for first thing. Yeah, www.firstnet, if I are ST, any T, that's it, that's it, that's it. That's it. YOC.net, Carlos D. Almeida is director for sales for South Africa at YOC and open access data centers. And Sean Finicak is GM of FirstNet. Thank you for an insightful discussion with our tech central audience today. I much appreciate it.