The $650 million open-access cable system is the biggest to land on the Africa continent and will link southern Africa and Europe.
The 14,000 kilometre ultra-high-capacity fibreoptic system will also land in Namibia, Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, Portugal and the UK.
The South African-based consortium includes Broadband Infraco, MTN Group, Tata Communications through Neotel, Vodacom () and Telksom SA. Additional members include Angola Cables, Cable & Wireless, Congo Telecom, Office Congolais des Postes et Telecommunications (OCPT), Togo Telecom and Telecom Namibia.
The system design is for 5.12 terabits per second, measured at 10 gigabits per second wavelength technology, and will effectively raise SA's broadband capacity by more than 500 gigabits per second, according to the consortium.
"Its design of four fibre pair and 128 wavelength technology make Wacs the largest cable system to ever land in sub-Saharan Africa. It will be capable of carrying the equivalent traffic of Seacom, EASSy and SAT-3/WASC/SAFE cable systems combined. Wacs will meet the demand for capacity well into the first quarter of the 21st century," said Dr Angus Hay of Neotel, co-chair of the Wacs management committee.
Dr Andrew Shaw, interim CEO of Broadband Infraco, said: "The African continent still yearns for affordable higher-speed connectivity. Meeting the needs for increased capacity along the cable route, this network will enable the landing countries to be served by a system offering significant capacity and lowering the cost of broadband in support of economic growth and innovative applications such as e-education and e-health that can positively impact peoples' lives."
Andries Delport, Vodacom Group's chief technical officer, said: "We've made great strides expanding the Vodacom network over the past year, adding about 1,000 new 3G base stations and rolling out fibre transmission to base stations and the core network. This significantly increased network capacity positions us to provide our customers with superior data connectivity. However, it is rather pointless to have a great national data network without decent international connectivity and bandwidth, which is why we are so excited about Wacs."
Karel Pienaar, MTN SA MD, said: "Africa has, until now, been a cyclist on the information superhighway. MTN's investment in Wacs will ensure that millions of our subscribers in SA and across the continent have the capacity and the ability to optimally utilise the data and telemetry offerings that modern telephony applications provide. We sincerely believe that the commercialisation of Wacs and other submarine cables will set the stage for a mobile revolution that will enhance the quality of life for millions of people across the continent."
Casper K Chihaka, managing executive at Telkom Wholesale Service, said: "Various reasons led to the choice of Yzerfontein as a landing point for Wacs and allocating the responsibility to land the cable in SA to Telkom. All submarine cables that enter SA are located at either Melkbosstrand or Mtunzini, thus effectively two international fibre gateways.
"Events such as earthquakes or even a large ship dragging its anchor has seen several cables being cut during singular events across the world. SA needs a third international fibre gateway to reduce the risk of complete isolation from the rest of the world," he said.
Telkom said that, once Wacs had commenced commercial operation, it would be able to provide service through three diverse gateways providing redundancy even under disastrous conditions.
The cable itself would only be ready for commercial use in the first quarter of 2012.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Gareth Voster
Quelle/Source: BusinessLIVE, 19.04.2011
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