Telecom major Bharti Airtel today launched a mix of satellite and optical fibre cable based new network, Africa Connect, for enhancing connectivity within Africa and with the rest of the world.
Africa Connect has an integrated fibre and satellite network with 42 Points of Presence (PoP) spread across 17 African countries, the company said in a statement.
“Africa is also emerging as an economic hub. We are uniquely poised to connect the continent to the rest of the world. Our full-suite of integrated telecom offerings...will help expand our access to high growth markets in the region and consolidate our efforts of making India as a hub for global internet traffic,” Bharti Airtel’s CEO for Global Business, Ajay Chitkara said.
Africa Connect augments the international connectivity into Africa through under sea cable including SEACOM, Eassy, Teams, WACS, Globalcom1, SEAMEWE4, IMEWE and EIG in East, West and North Africa.
“With Africa seeing a significant jump in the growth of data and connectivity this initiative will help us in meeting the bandwidth requirements and diverse needs of our customers,” Airtel Africa’s Chief Marketing Officer Andre Beyers said.
Airtel’s Africa Connect has inter-connected with network of more than 25 local network partners.
The entire network, further, interconnects with Bharti Airtel’s submarine cable landing station in Mumbai thereby allowing access to the company’s terrestrial connectivity into the SAARC countries and infrastructure across the Pacific to the United States.