Equiano
Google's Portugal to South Africa cable, the first to switch capacity per fibre pair and the first to reach St Helena
Open it on the earth: cut a link, lose a siteWorkbook (DC Sim template v1.4)
The story
Google announced Equiano in 2019 as a cable it would fund alone, to improve connectivity, resilience and latency for people in Africa. The trunk runs about 15,000 km from Sesimbra, Portugal, to Melkbosstrand near Cape Town, with branches to Lomé, Lagos, Swakopmund and St Helena. It was the first subsea cable to switch capacity per fibre pair instead of per wavelength, so whole pairs can be handed to partners such as WIOCC and Openserve. St Helena, which had relied on satellite, owns its 1,154 km branch; when service started in October 2023, measured latency from London fell from 657 ms to 131 ms.
Notable
- First subsea cable built to switch optically at the fibre-pair level rather than per wavelength, which Google said makes it simpler to add and reallocate capacity between locations.
- Design capacity is 144 Tbps over 12 fibre pairs of 12 Tbps each; Google put it at about 20 times the capacity of the last cable built to serve the region.
- St Helena's 1,154 km branch came ashore at Ruperts on 29 August 2021, the first shore landing of the whole Equiano project.
- When St Helena went live on 1 October 2023, Kentik measured latency from London falling from 657 ms to 131 ms.
- The trunk was announced with nine branching points off West Africa; at that time only a Lagos, Nigeria branch had a planned landing.
Sites
| Code | Place | Role | Provider |
|---|---|---|---|
| PT-SES | Sesimbra, Portugal | landing | MEO (Altice Portugal) |
| TG-LOM | Lomé, Togo | landing | CSquared Woezon |
| NG-LAG | Lagos, Nigeria | landing | WIOCC |
| SH-RUP | Ruperts, St. Helena | landing | St Helena Government |
| NA-SWA | Swakopmund, Namibia | landing | Paratus |
| ZA-MEL | Melkbosstrand, South Africa | landing | Openserve (Telkom) |
Links
| From | To | Type | Capacity | Length | Year | Protected | Est. one-way latency |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PT-SES | ZA-MEL | submarine | 144 Tbps | 15,000 km | 2022 | no | ≈ 63.9 ms |
| PT-SES | TG-LOM | submarine | 3 Tbps | ≈ 3,741 km (great circle) | 2023 | no | ≈ 28.1 ms |
| PT-SES | NG-LAG | submarine | — | ≈ 3,780 km (great circle) | 2022 | no | ≈ 28.3 ms |
| ZA-MEL | SH-RUP | submarine | — | 1,154 km | 2023 | no | ≈ 23.4 ms |
| ZA-MEL | NA-SWA | submarine | — | ≈ 1,288 km (great circle) | 2023 | no | ≈ 9.7 ms |
Latency marked ≈ is our estimate from the great-circle distance × 1.5 at 5 µs per km, not the operator's figure.
Sources
- Introducing Equiano, a subsea cable from Portugal to South Africa · Google Cloud Blog · 2019-06-28
- Equiano (submarine communications cable) · Wikipedia
- Seacom services go live on Equiano subsea cable · Fibre Systems · 2023-03-21
- Google's Equiano Cable Has Landed in South Africa (TechCentral) · SubTel Forum · 2022-08-09
- Google Announces Equiano Cable Linking Africa and Europe (Data Centre Dynamics) · SubTel Forum · 2019-06-28
- Equiano · Submarine Networks
- WIOCC Builds New Cable Landing Station in Lagos for Google's Equiano Cable · Submarine Networks · 2021-02-17
- Equiano Cable Lands in Sesimbra, Portugal · Submarine Networks · 2022-05-27
- Equiano Subsea Cable Lands in Togo, First Stop in Africa · Submarine Networks · 2022-03-22
- Google's Equiano Cable Has Landed in Togo! (Al Jazeera) · SubTel Forum · 2022-03-21
- Pioneer, CSquared Woezon connect Togo to Equiano cable · Connecting Africa · 2023-11-02
- Equiano Subsea Cable Lands in Lagos, Nigeria · Submarine Networks · 2022-04-22
- Equiano Cable Lands in Namibia · Submarine Networks · 2022-07-06
- Paratus Lights up Equiano Cable System in Namibia · Submarine Networks · 2023-06-16
- Equiano Subsea Cable Lands in South Africa · Submarine Networks · 2022-08-11
- Openserve eyes 16Tbps capacity with Google's Equiano cable · ITWeb · 2022-08-23
- Fibre Optic Cable Landed on St Helena · St Helena Government · 2021-09-01
- Fibre Optic Cable Project · St Helena Government
- Saint Helena activates long-awaited subsea connection · Kentik · 2023-10-01
- Google's Equiano cable branch to Saint Helena activated · SDxCentral · 2023-10-03
Part of the open famous data centers dataset (CC BY 4.0). Updated 2026-10-15.
What is Equiano famous for?
Google's Portugal to South Africa cable, the first to switch capacity per fibre pair and the first to reach St Helena
How many sites and links does Equiano have in this dataset?
6 sites and 5 links, of which 5 are recorded as not protected. Figures are from the public sources listed on the page.