Submarine cable operator Seacom, which connects Africa to Europe and Asia, has partnered with European network operator Interoute to improve the quality of internet access on the African continent by caching content closer to its consumers.

The project involves the design, deployment and operation of nine land-based internet access points that connect the Seacom subsea cable to the broadband fibre networks of East and South Africa. The access points are located in France, Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa and Tanzania with expansion plans to install points of presence in Uganda and Rwanda. The network is enabled with content caching nodes to bring content closer to consumers in Africa and improve the internet experience.

The building of the network has already begun and Seacom will be offering managed IP services to customers from April. The new network will build resilience into the availability of advanced internet services. Currently, all internet traffic to East Africa is routed via Europe, leaving the region exposed to data losses if any of the land-based or submarine section of the system is damaged. The new network will provide alternative routing via Asia as well as local routing, enabling local network continuity in the event of outages in the Mediterranean or Middle East.

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Interoute and Seacom have also entered into a distribution agreement which enable services across the two networks. Local internet service providers will utilise Seacom to deliver high capacity connectivity down the last mile, using both fixed and fixed mobile technologies, while Interoute’s managed business services will be available through Seacom.