Liquid Telecom, now Liquid Intelligent Technologies, has expanded its terrestrial fibre network to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) for the first time. The company says it had deployed a 2,500km longhaul fibre network in the country.
The DRC network runs from the coastal city of Muanda, 12km north of the Congo River, which marks the border with Angola. Muanda is also the landing point — or planned landing point — of four subsea cables, 2Africa, ACE, Equiano and WACS.
“The completion of this project is part of the strategic vision to connect the African continent to the rest of the world. This fibre deployment not only has the potential to transform the economy of the country, but we are also bringing access to scalable state-of-the-art digital and cloud services that will enable them to connect to the global digital economy,” said Michel Hebert (pictured), CEO of Liquid Intelligent Technologies in DRC.
Liquid said the expansion connects the DRC to its One Africa broadband network totalling more than 73,000km across the continent. The terrestrial fibre connects Muanda to cities as far as Cape Town and Dar es Salam, said Liquid.
“This is a first for the country, as no operator currently offers such a seamless link across the continent. The DRC route is part of the first-ever complete east to west network on the African continent, offering low latency, high bandwidth fibre connectivity and high availability,” said the company.
Apparently, the fibre has reduced latency across Africa from 250ms to 50ms.
Liquid Telecom, last month, raised $840 million in a bond sale. This was to refinance debt and expand further into Africa. According to Bloomberg, the amount raised also included a $100 million investment by the International Finance Corp.
