Tech giant, Facebook Inc., is laying an Internet cable underwater across the continent of Africa in a bid to bring access to more people that live in 20 nations in the continent, OYOGist.com has learned.
Africa is the least connected continent on earth, with less than 30% of the continent’s 1.3 billion people having access to the Internet.
Facebook is building the new underwater Internet connection in partnership with Internet Service Providers such as China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange and Vodafone.
The effort of the leading social networking provider aims to get more habitants to the Internet and bring access to banking and other necessities that they cannot afford with the Internet.
Called the 2Africa, at 37,000 kilometers long, the transformation cables Facebook would be laying across Africa, the Middle East and Europe would connect the continents and is long enough to wrap around the entire earth.
It would inter-connect 23 countries across the three continents including Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Djibouti, Egypt, Spain, France, Gabon, United kingdom, Ghana, Italy, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Oman, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania and South Africa.
The huge investment will come at a bill of $1 billion US dollars to the company and is expected to be delivered in 2023 or early 2024.
“At 37,000 km long, 2Africa will be nearly equal to the circumference of the Earth. The project is impressive for more than length alone: It will provide nearly three times the total network capacity of all the subsea cables serving Africa today,” a statement released by Facebook said.
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