Yet more submarine fibre capacity is coming to SA. And, for the first time, a transatlantic link connecting Southern Africa with Brazil is on the cards.
SA-based technology investment company eFive Telecoms plans to extend the Main One cable, which connects Europe and Nigeria along Africa’s west coast, to Cape Town.
The cable system, which will probably have a design capacity of at least 2Tbit/s, will also be extended across the Atlantic, connecting Angola to Brazil and giving SA a far shorter and more direct route to carry traffic to the fast-growing South American nation.
eFive Telecoms, a black-owned and controlled investment company established in 2009, has commissioned Alcatel-Lucent to build and maintain the new cable system on its behalf. Neither party has disclosed the value of the deal.
However, it’s understood the system will cost more than US$400m.
Earlier this year, Seacom, which operates a high-capacity cable on Africa’s east coast, signed a memorandum of understanding with eFive Telecoms and the Main One consortium. However, it’s not yet clear what role Seacom will play in the construction of the new cable. A Seacom spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.
At the time of signing the agreement, Seacom and eFive Telecoms said the extended system would have landing points in Gabon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and Namibia.
“The planned submarine network will provide cable route diversity to South America, making the most economical and operational sense in the current landscape,” says eFive MD Lawrence Mulaudzi.
Alcatel-Lucent will maintain the system through its Atlantic Private Maintenance Agreement, which covers more than 100 000km of submarine cable infrastructure from the west coast of Africa to the Caribbean and north to Greenland.
The new cable system could come on-stream by as early as 2012, the same year the 5,1Tbit/s Africa Coast to Europe (Ace) cable, backed by France Telecom and connecting SA with Europe along Africa’s west coast, is set to go live.
The eFive Telecoms cable system will be the third new system running along this route. In addition to Ace, the West African Cable System, also with a design capacity of 5,1Tbit/s, is due to be completed in the second half of 2011. – Duncan McLeod, TechCentral
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