Sustainable landscape principles for an undersea fibre optic landing station on the West Coast.
The internet superhighway runs as an interconnected web across the world, joining countries and continents via terrestrial and subsea cables. These data wires bring high-speed internet access to the four corners of the globe, providing access to world-class bandwidth.
There are currently around 1.5-million kilometres of subsea cables under the world’s oceans. When they reach the shore, they connect to landing stations. These stations are essentially access points that connect the submarine cables to terrestrial cable networks.
Fibre optic cables are composed of thin strands of glass fibres. Insulated inside a plastic casing, they allow long-distance data transfers to happen at the speed of light. The difference between fibre optics and other types of telecommunication cables is that they provide much higher bandwidth speeds across very long distances.
Fibre optic subsea cables criss-cross the globe and there are around 500 cables that are active or under construction, including the network which stretches around the African continent, supporting economic growth in the region and connecting South Africa, Mozambique, Kenya, Tanzania, Djibouti, Egypt, France and India.
The cable went live in July 2009 and was upgraded in 2018 to have a capacity of 1.5 Tbps. The cable connects to nine landing stations along the way, including Mtunzini (South Africa), Mombassa (Kenya) Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), Maputo (Mozambique), Marseille (France) and even Mumbai (India).
Landing stations are locations where the submarine cables meet the land. They are an essential part of the fibre network infrastructure. They distribute the data carried on the networks, joining the submarine cables to terrestrial cables and providing power to the cables.
Fibre optic cables are able to transmit huge amounts of data despite being relatively tiny. Most are around the thickness of a garden hose. Within each cable are numerous minute glass strands, as thin as a human hair. These are the paths along which the light pulses travel.
This project was for the landing station infrastructure located in Melkbosstrand where the cable reaches the South African shores from where the cables connect to a data centre which brings superfast internet connectivity to the Western Cape.
Located within a residential suburb at the urban edge, the landscape project focussed on contextual integration and visual screening. Indigenous plant material able to withstand the harsh west coast climatic conditions, low maintenance and drought conditions were selected for the project.
As an offset to gaining the re-zoning rights, a small public open space adjoining the site was upgraded as a bio-diversity park with an informal pathway, trees, benches and a stormwater detention area.
Adapted from internet source: www.seacom.co.za