Teraco strengthens critical Cape Town corridor to support African connectivity

The challenge

Barriers to scaling 100G in Africa

As undersea fiber optic cables bring in new waves of subsea capacity along Africa’s coasts, the region faces challenges with how to carry that bandwidth inland. This challenge is clearly visible in Cape Town, South Africa, where two of Teraco’s data centers (CT1 and CT2) form a critical corridor for cloud platforms, content networks, financial services, and network operators. Growing customer demand for 100G links along this corridor meant Teraco needed to increase backbone capacity without adding complexity.

Michele McCann, Head of Platforms, Teraco Data Environments, explains why high-speed capacity upgrades are not always straightforward in the African market.

“As Africa moves from 10G to 100G, licensing has become a real blocker for many regional network operators. Higher speeds often feel very techy and intimidating, and when you then add extra licenses, restrictions, or unexpected costs, it creates hesitation in the market. That friction can slow adoption and make the step to 100G feel more complex than it needs to be.”

The Solution

Cost-efficient, open DWDM built for regional realities

Teraco deployed redundant 100G DWDM links between its Cape Town data centers using an open Smartoptics platform delivered in collaboration with regional partner HardwareCo. The compact network elements minimize space, power and cooling requirements while improving fiber efficiency through breakout support. This cost-efficient approach is well aligned with African market needs. The interoperable architecture also reduces friction when sourcing optics by minimizing the need to validate each new optics choice before deployment.

“Smartoptics’ open approach immediately stood out to us. There are no hidden licenses or vendor restrictions, which already removes a big barrier. Once the system was in place, we didn’t have to stop and question every optics choice or go back to the vendor to ask whether something would work. That gives us much more confidence when we need to add capacity,” says Michele.

Scaling capacity without organizational overhead

As backbone capacity grows and 100G becomes more common, streamlined network operations are also important for removing growth blockers. For interconnection platforms like Teraco’s, bringing in new network elements should not create new organizational bottlenecks. Keeping day-to-day transmission tasks simple and predictable helps ensure that capacity can be scaled quickly, reliably and without added overhead.

“The Smartoptics network elements are intuitive enough that our IP networking engineers could operate them after just a day of training, without needing to become optical transmission experts. We can configure, provision, and activate services ourselves, and we don’t need to rely on the vendor for every change. That level of independence is important for us. It lets us scale without adding people or complexity,” says Michele.

The Result

Rapid expansion in ten months – disruption-free upgrades

Over the course of just ten months, Teraco expanded backbone capacity between its two Cape Town data centers in two phases in rapid succession. The upgrades strengthened resilience along a critical interconnection corridor while allowing Teraco to respond to demand as it emerged rather than overbuilding upfront. A plug-and-play design makes it possible to complete capacity upgrades without disrupting services, preserving stability for latency-sensitive and business-critical customer traffic.

“We’ve already upgraded the route more than once as demand has grown, and all of that was carefully planned so customers didn’t feel any disruption. Knowing that we can increase capacity on a critical route without impacting services means we can sleep well at night, even as traffic continues to increase. It gives us confidence that the Smartoptics platform we’ve chosen can support us as our network continues to grow,” says Michele.

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