By Farzana Rasool, ITWeb journalist.

Seacom has signed a master services agreement with Telecomunicações de Moçambique to allow access to the largest and most distributed fibre-optic network in Mozambique.

The agreement with the telecommunications service provider will see Seacom customers also get access to a diverse route into Zimbabwe and additional border presence into Malawi and SA.

This will allow customers in Zimbabwe to interconnect to the Seacom system in Maputo via Mutare.

The company says this additional route through Mozambique complements its existing route through SA, via Beit Bridge, and provides Zimbabwean customers with resiliency and redundancy.

Seacom, along with Main One, previously interconnected its West and East African cable systems, in order to provide connection between any of their points of presence (POPs) across Africa and between SA and Nigeria.

The partnership launched capacity services from POP to POP, from a STM-1 level and above.

"While efforts to implement a physical cable between Nigeria and SA continue, we have joined our cables together in Europe to satisfy many of our customers' immediate requirements for capacity between Nigeria and SA," says Main One CEO Funke Opeke.

"We hold the view that a ring-type system around the entire continent is the best way to attain adequate redundancy, while offering customers a comprehensive connectivity solution," says Seacom CEO Brian Herlihy.

Source: ITWeb, Jun 22, 2011