WCA March 2016

Industry news

14,530km WACS cable now live after upgrade

for bandwidth,” said Mike Constable, CEO of Huawei Marine. “The additional capacity now available on the WACS submarine cable will greatly enrich international comm- unications.”

customers,” said Vishen Maharaj, chair of the WACS consortium’s management committee. “The increasing reliance on Internet and mobile applications, high- definition video, and other data intensive applications such as cloud services are fundamental drivers underpinning the increasing demand

HUAWEI Marine has announced that the recently completed 14,530km system upgrade of the west African cable system (WACS), is now live, having completed a stringent customer certification and testing programme. WACS is owned and operated by a consortium of 18 international and regional carriers. When first launched in 2012, WACS was deployed with 10G technology, and an initial design capacity of 5.12Tbps. An upgrade to 100G uses Huawei’s third generation soft decision-forward error correction (SD-FEC) and bit-interleaved technologies that guarantee the compatibility of 100Gb channels with the 10Gb channels originally deployed. WACS’ design capacity has now increased to 14.5Tb. “Thanks to the efficiency and expertise of Huawei Marine’s delivery team… the WACS upgrade was completed smoothly and on time, fulfilling our on-going commitment to our

West African Cable System Website : www.wacscable.com

Hengtong’s 75 per cent stake in Aberdare Hengtong Optic-electric Co Ltd, a Chinese power and fibre optic cable manufacturer, is to acquire a 75 per cent stake in Aberdare Cables Proprietary Limited, and a 100 per cent stake in Aberdare Holdings Europe BV Limited. Aberdare Cables Proprietary, founded in 1946, is among the biggest cable makers in South Africa, offering low and medium voltage electrical cables to industry segments including power transmission and distribution, railway, petrochemical, and residential construction. Aberdare Holdings Europe includes the wholly owned Cables de Comunicaciones Zaragoza SL (CCZSL) of Spain, and Portugal’s Alcobre-Condutores Electricos SA. Hengtong Optic-electric Co Ltd – China Website : www.htgd.com.cn

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2016