It’s already been a busy week for Liquid Dataport, with an African fibre route launch and a major satcoms-related memorandum of understanding (MoU) announced in the past few days.
The company, a business of pan-African technology group Liquid Intelligent Technologies, has launched its newest fibre route, which connects Mombasa in Kenya to Muanda on the west coast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
This is said to be the shortest route connecting East to West Africa, reducing data transmission latency by 20 milliseconds. It passes through Uganda and Rwanda and brings more reliable and affordable broadband connectivity to over 40 million people living and working in all the major cities along the route.
The new East-West route enables Liquid’s customers to take advantage of capacities ranging from 1Mbps to 100,000Mbps. It also enables cloud supplier redundancy with access to multiple data centres and cable landing stations, ensuring maximum uptime.
Liquid describes this as a much anticipated 3,800km route that “marks a new era in East-West connectivity on the continent, adding to Liquid’s One Africa Digital Network, which now spans 110,000 kilometres”.
But that’s not all. Liquid Dataport has also signed an MoU with global communications company Viasat to engage in B2B and B2C service opportunities across West Africa.
Liquid and Viasat intend to focus on the potential commercialisation and distribution of satellite broadband to reduce internet connectivity costs and improve data connections across the region. Under the terms of the MoU, Liquid Dataport will offer Viasat’s connectivity services working through local partners.
As a part of Viasat’s expansion into Africa, the company’s next-generation ViaSat-3 satellite constellation is expected to deliver connectivity services to EMEA.
In addition, Viasat and Liquid Intelligent Technologies independently announced recent agreements with the Microsoft Airband Initiative to deliver internet access to millions of underserved people in Africa by the end of 2025, targeting regions that include the DRC, Nigeria, Senegal, Angola, Tanzania, and Zambia.
