Teraco, Africa’s largest and most interconnected data centre operator, has become an integral node to the Meltingpot Indianoceanic Submarine System (MÉTISS)

MÉTISS is a 3 200 km sub-sea fibre optic cable system connecting South Africa to the Indian Ocean islands of Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius. The MÉTISS consortium comprises Canal+ Télécom, CEB Fibernet, Emtel, Zeop and SRR (SFR) Telma. The MÉTISS cable lands in Amanzimtoti and is backhauled by Liquid Telecoms to Teraco’s data centre in Durban (DB1).

With MÉTISS consortium members having infrastructure in both the Teraco Durban (DB1) and Johannesburg (JB1) data centre facilities, the Indian Ocean islands have direct access to Teraco’s ecosystem of over 300 networks, 130 IT service providers, 50 global content providers and the key global cloud providers, says Michele McCann, head of interconnection and peering at Teraco. The availability of a new cable servicing the Indian Ocean islands region widens the addressable market for content and cloud providers in South Africa. It adds new resilience to the existing telecommunications infrastructure.

MÉTISS provides global telecoms organisations, multi-nationals and enterprises with interests in the region with the reliable services and capacities to empower their digital strategies.

Situated on Durban’s north coast, Teraco DB1 is a strategic interconnection hub on the African sub-sea cable map with access to MÉTISS and the cable systems of Seacom and EASSy that are already accessible from the facility. Teraco’s DB1 facility is connected to the JB1 campus in Isando, Johannesburg, through a wide choice of carriers, via diverse regional fibre routes. It will allow clients to increase the number of partners they connect with and expand their reach into new markets. Teraco’s DB1 facility offers clients secure co-location and interconnection services, as well as the ability to leverage Teraco’s digital hubs in DB1 and JB1 directly.

“The cable brings connectivity across regions that were previously hard to reach. Through Teraco, access to this cable is an interconnect away and in keeping with our tagline, ‘the world connects here’, we are very proud to play such a pivotal role in the success of this cable system,” says McCann. Peering at Africa’s largest internet exchange, NAPAfrica, is now also possible for the island region and brings many benefits such as reduced latency, network fault tolerance, reliable exchange of traffic, increased routing control and improved network performance.

Interconnection and peering successfully addresses a growing need for more bandwidth but at the lowest possible latency. This also needs to be done cost-effectively. The MÉTISS cable system will enable further interconnection within the Indian Ocean islands region and the growth of its digital economy. Teraco makes it easy and accessible for everyone to connect within the data centre and immediately benefit.

With its world class data centre infrastructure and network dense ecosystems, Teraco forms a vital part of the African internet’s backbone and is an essential part of the modern enterprise’s digital transformation strategy. Its ever-expanding ecosystems move Teraco beyond co-location and firmly establish it as an open market place for digital growth and innovation. Discovering new business partners, making strategic interconnection choices, on-ramping to your choice of cloud and reaching new markets globally – Teraco provides a highly secure, flexible and resilient home for digital organisations the world over.