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wiredInUSA - May 2012
wiredInUSA - May 2012
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.
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
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.
ASIA
&
AFRICA
NEWS
Picture : Alessandro Paiva
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