Connecting people and companies across Africa and beyond

Located on the northeast coast of the Horn of Africa, Djibouti is situated on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait—one of the world’s busiest shipping routes serving the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. The nation is a connectivity hub for East Africa, made possible by state-owned network provider Djibouti Telecom.

As part of a consortium of telecoms operators, Djibouti Telecom operates eight submarine cable systems, including DARE1, which crosses Djibouti, Kenya, and Somalia. The 5,000 km network, which connects the countries to data centers and content providers around the world, offers businesses and citizens access to internet, mobile, and global cloud services. Faced with growing traffic driven by widespread remote work and learning, Djibouti Telecom set out with Ciena to upgrade DARE1.

“Submarine cable networks are our lifeline to the connected world, especially with more people relying on the internet than ever before,” said Mohamed Assoweh Bouh, General Manager of Djibouti Telecom. “The DARE1 upgrade lets us bring much-needed connectivity and content closer to more users, faster—priming our area for economic growth today and for years to come.”

Djibouti Telecom is deploying Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme submarine network solution, which utilizes the 6500 Packet-Optical Platform powered by the WaveLogic family, allowing a doubling of line rates to 400 Gbps. Spectrum Sharing capabilities enable the partitioning of submarine optical spectrum to different end users for more efficient use of undersea assets. The network is managed via Ciena’s Manage, Control and Plan (MCP) domain controller.

“Leveraging Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme, Djibouti Telecom expands the capacity of DARE1 to make possible dynamic new 10G, 100G, and Spectrum Sharing services for an increasingly digital world,” said Ian Clarke, Vice President of Global Submarine Solutions, Ciena.