Angola Cables hits record data traffic from Africa

Record levels of traffic have been registered across the Angola Cables network (www.AngolaCables.co.ao)., which connects Africa to the global Internet via West Africa and South America.

Intensification of data traffic has been attributed to the increase in digital content consumption, the rapid expansion of cloud computing services and the ever-rising demand for high speed, low latency connectivity.

“This milestone underscores Angola Cables’ growing responsibility and responsiveness to customer needs in West African markets, with an emphasis on improved Service Level Agreements (SLA),” says Fernando Fernandes, CEO of TelCables Nigeria, the local operation for Nigeria and West Africa countries of Angola Cables.

“Our status as a reliable operator, fostering strong relationships with both local and international customers, is a testament to our resilience, commitment to good connectivity, security, and product diversity.”

Rui Faria, Angola Cables chief commercial officer, says that many of the hyperscaler data centres, content providers and other carriers have been using the South Atlantic configuration of the SACS, Monet and WACS cables as a convenient redundancy option to connect to destinations in the USA, UK and Europe.

“The recent cable faults experienced in parts of Africa and the Red Sea has resulted in large volumes of traffic being diverted to other cables,” he says. “But apart from this, we have seen a steady and significant growth in overall traffic over our backbone network.

“At present the Angola Cables fibre network point is accounting for more than 70% of the internet and data traffic flows to and from Africa. Hyperscalers, streaming and gaming networks are using SACS as well as the Angola Cables’ backbone and its partner networks to connect to Europe and Asia at lower latencies.”

Angola Cables has also registered a substantial uptick in traffic volumes over the Monet Cable connecting the USA to South America, now accounting for over 20% of the data traffic between North and South America.

“With the option to connect to the main centres in Europe via the EllaLink subsea cable and reduced latencies of around 30%, many companies are seeing this as an attractive option for their peering and IP Transit requirements.  

According to the Center for Applied Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), Angola Cables is now ranked 24th in its official global rankings and the only African network operator in the top 50. The CAIDA rankings are determined by the “cone size” or number of connections linked to its registered Autonomous System Number (ASN) and highlights the number of direct and indirect customers or links. 

Angola Cables has capacity across more than 80,000km of subsea cable, with multiple links to a growing number of data centres and global IXPs.