ABOUT ANGOLA CABLES
Angola Cables is an Angolan telecommunications multinational operating in the wholesale market. It sells international transmission capacity through submarine fiber optic cables and IP Transit and manages IXP Angonix in Luanda, Angola and the AngoNAP data center in Fortaleza, Brazil (Tier 3).
The Flexential-Angola partnership provides customers access to Angola’s MONET Cable and offers customers connectivity via the low-latency, high-capacity South Atlantic Cable System (SACS).
ABOUT ÂNGELO GAMA
CEO, Angola Cables
Gama started his career as a technical support engineer for HP in Lisbon and now has more than 21 years of experience working in the telecommunications and information technology sectors. Immediately prior to joining Angola Cables in 2019, Gama was the General Manager of Net One, one of Angola’s largest Wireless ISPs. He has been involved in major projects throughout his career, like the launch of the first 3G mobile phone operator in Europe, the merger between HP and Compaq, and Atos Origin in the Netherlands.
To start, can you provide an insider’s view into the partnership with Flexential?
We had been in talks for a while, but Flexential’s interest in a partnership was clinched when we introduced our GDI (Global Data Center Interconnect) system. This system offers a direct connection to key international data centers, so it’s a product that now can deliver Flexential resources in the US to regions in Africa.
Through GDI, companies experience the edge phenomenon. It’s a hassle if you’re in the US and wanting to extend your services to Brazil, especially when IT infrastructure isn’t your core business. We want to remove a customer’s concern over the service provider or data center point person. Whether a customer is looking for placement in Sao Paolo, Brazil, or Johannesburg, South Africa, we aim to take away those hassles and create a one-stop-shop for everybody.
In combining Flexential’s 40 data centers in the US with the 19 in our network, we created a growing and powerful global interconnected data center network. This partnership broadens Flexential’s international subsea cable connections from APAC and LATAM into African markets via simple, cross-connect fiber optics. Many of Flexential’s customers have a significant presence in the region and will benefit by experiencing low-latency, express connections.
Connectivity amongst data centers has broadened horizons and affected a trend of data center and subsea operators working more closely than ever. As more hyperscalers invest in subsea and the number of traditional telecom carriers reduces, how has the subsea commercial paradigm changed?
Technology now has advanced to “open systems” where rights go beyond capacity to the whole fiber pair. Now access is open to almost anyone, not just big OTTs or hyperscalers—so the way telcos do business has changed completely. No longer does a company exist as purely a telco.We differentiated our service offerings and added value by continuing to release new products. We believe this strategy will compensate for the loss of revenue from the subsea commercial paradigm change—having big OTTs as partners, not main customers.
