wiredinUSA May 2012

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Picture : Alessandro Paiva

ASIA & AFRICA NEWS

New subsea cable for west Africa The 14,000km West African Cable System (WACS), the first new subsea telecom- munications cable on Africa’s west coast since Sat-3 was launched 11 years ago, will be launched officially in May 2012.

shortly thereafter, promising to put further downward pressure on broadband prices in South Africa. The cable, which has a design capacity of 5,1Tbit/s and has cost $600m to build, will probably have in the region of 400Gbit/s of capacity when it becomes available for commercial service — more than the total design capacity of the older Sat-3 cable at 340Gbit/s. Hay says the WACS management committee is in the process of “accepting” the cable from the supplier, Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks. This entails signing off the final contractual agreements. “Final testing is now taking place,” he added.

Angus Hay, co-chair of the WACS management committee and chief technology officer at Neotel, says testing of WACS has progressed well and that the system is “essentially ready” for commercial service. An official launch function will take place at Yzerfontein, the site of the cable’s South African landing north of Cape Town. Commercial traffic should begin flowing across the system at the same time or

ASIA / AFRICA NEWS

wiredInUSA - May 2012

wiredInUSA - May 2012

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