MÉTISS a 3,200 kilometre subsea fibre optic cable system connecting South Africa to the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius has boosted regional interconnection.
The availability of a new cable servicing the Indian Ocean Islands region widens the addressable market for content and cloud providers in South Africa and adds new resilience to the existing telecommunications infrastructure.
The MÉTISS consortium comprises Canal+ Télécom, CEB Fibernet, Emtel, Zeop and SRR (SFR) Telma. The MÉTISS cable lands in Amanzimtoti and is backhauled by Liquid Telecoms to Teraco’s data centre in Durban (DB1).
With MÉTISS consortium members having infrastructure in both the Teraco Durban (DB1) and Johannesburg (JB1) data centre facilities, the Indian Ocean Islands have direct access to Teraco’s ecosystem of over 300 networks, 130 IT service providers, 50 global content providers and the key global cloud providers said Michele McCann, Head, Interconnection and Peering, Teraco.
MÉTISS provides global telecoms organisations, multinationals and enterprises with interests in the region with the reliable services and capacities to empower their digital strategies.
“The cable brings connectivity across regions that were previously hard to reach. Through Teraco, access to this cable is an interconnect away and in keeping with our tagline, ‘the world connects here’, we are very proud to play such a pivotal role in the success of this cable system,” said McCann.
Peeringat Africa’s largest Internet exchange, NAPAfrica, is now also possible for the island region and brings many benefits including: reduced latency, network fault tolerance, reliable exchange of traffic, increased routing control and improved network performance.
Interconnection and peering successfully addresses a growing need for more bandwidth but at the lowest possible latency. This also needs to be done cost-effectively. The MÉTISS cable system will enable further interconnection within the Indian Ocean Islands region and the growth of its digital economy. Teraco makes it easy and accessible for everyone to connect within the data centre and immediately benefit.
Situated on Durban’s north coast, Teraco DB1 is a strategic interconnection hub on the African subsea cable map with access to MÉTISS and the cable systems of Seacom and EASSy that are already accessible from the facility. Teraco’s DB1 facility is connected to the JB1 Campus in Isando, Johannesburg through a wide choice of carriers, via diverse regional fibre routes. It will allow clients to increase the number of partners they connect with and expand their reach into new markets.
