Participating are Telkom, Vodacom and the state-owned Broadband Infraco.
Another member is Tata Communications, the majority shareholder in Neotel, South Africa's second fixed line operator.
Wacs is a submarine fibre optic cable that will link countries in southern Africa, west Africa, and Europe, with at least 3.84 terabits per second on international bandwidth. The planned landing points include South Africa, Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde, Canary Islands, Portugal and the UK.
The landings in Namibia, the DRC, the Republic of Congo and Togo will provide the first direct connections for these countries to the global submarine network.
Andrew Mthembu, chairman of Broadband Infraco, said the company was set up in 2005 under the auspices of the department of trade and industry to take over the fibre optic infrastructure that had belonged to Transnet and Eskom. "It was decided that the infrastructure should be used in the course of bandwidth because the department felt that Telkom had the monopoly, especially in international connectivity," said Mthembu.
Under legislation of 2007, said Mthembu, Broadband Infraco was mandated to buy new equipment for national long distance infrastructure, and to get a licence from Icasa, the regulator.
While waiting for the licence, which is expected to be granted at the beginning of the second half of this year, the company was to provide capacity to Neotel in the first instance, but once it was granted, Broadband Infraco was required to service other licensed carriers.
Mthembu said government thought this was necessary because Telkom was expensive and other service providers found connectivity exorbitant. Another motivation was to help towards economic development and access to information such as e-health and e-education, and other government services.
He said Wacs would be 13 500km long, starting from the Western Cape.
"It makes sense to link to international cables. That was the rationale and reason to participate in Wacs," said Mthembu.
Broadband Infraco had started nationally with 5 600km of optic cables and this was now standing at 14 000km, covering all the major towns, and stopping at the various South African borders.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Wiseman Khuzwayo
Quelle/Source: Business Report, 19.04.2009
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