FibreCo owns and operates a national open access dark fibre network, providing infrastructure, connectivity and services across South Africa. The acquisition is subject to approval by the South African Competition Commission.
SEACOM says this acquisition represents another major milestone towards achieving its vision to expand its African footprint through the consolidation of fibre assets. SEACOM believes this is necessary for the evolution of the market, particularly as 5G arrives with its requirement for pervasive fibre networks.
SEACOM connects South Africa to the east coast of Africa, India and Europe and FibreCo connects over 60 points of presence across South Africa, including major data centres in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Port Elizabeth and East London. FibreCo’s network also connects the SEACOM subsea cable system, which lands in Mtunzini on the east coast of South Africa), to the WACS cable that lands at Yzerfontein on the west coast. This enables fully redundant high-speed ring protection “for diversity around the African continent”.
According to a SEACOM statement, “The FibreCo acquisition significantly strengthens SEACOM’s operations in South Africa by creating a platform for the expansion of its business services. It enables the delivery of high-speed Internet connectivity and cloud products into smaller cities and towns across the country, which have typically been under-serviced.”
FibreCo’s current shareholders say that they have met the original intent behind starting the business in 2009, namely “to successfully transform South Africa’s long-haul bandwidth transmission landscape”.