Facebook’s 2Africa Cable and Net Neutrality

On subsea cables and anti-competitive practices

Nigerians often refer to the internet as President Obasanjo’s. It’s an inside joke about giving credit to a leader who’s had arguably the greatest impact on national broadband penetration.

It’s similar to how Americans refer to the internet as Al Gore’s.

But all jokes aside, in the future, large portions of the internet may have different managers.

Subsea connections

In the past 10 years, data use from internet content providers has skyrocketed from below 8% to nearly 40%.

Big tech is investing big in subsea cables to carry the traffic.

Facebook recently announced its newest subsea project, 2Africa, to interconnect 23 countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Absolute power

Facebook is also building an in-country presence through local partners in places like South Africa and Nigeria.

Because they own the content and are now investing in the medium, Facebook and other ICPs will be bigger threats to competitive practices in the future than ISPs have been until now.

The company has stressed that all infrastructure is being built on an open-access model, but with America killing net neutrality and the rest of the world divided about its tenants, the incentive to follow through isn’t as high.

It feels inevitable that at some point, we’ll be referring to portions of the internet as Mark Zuckerberg’s.

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