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52 African countries are now connected to submarine cables, either directly or by terrestrial cross-border fibre optic networks. 44% of Africans live within a 25-km reach of a fibre node. But which cities and suburbs now have fibre-to-the-home, and how many homes and offices are plugged directly into the world’s fibre optic backbone? Africa’s inventory of terrestrial transmission networks has more than doubled in the last five years. As Africa’s total inventory of transmission network edges towards 1 million route kilometres, the continent had a total of 586,707-km of operational fibre optic network by December 2014 according to latest research by Africa Bandwidth Maps. This comprises of long-haul, metropolitan and FTTH/B (fibre-to-the-home/building) terrestrial fibre optic networks. Of this inventory of 586,707–km of operational terrestrial fibre, at least 91,182-km was within cities: metropolitan fibre rings and FTTH/B networks. The metro rings distribute bandwidth from fibre... Read More →