The first direct submarine cable link between Africa and South Africa is nearing completion, the company backing its construction said on Thursday.
The “wet-plant” installation of the South Atlantic Cable System (Sacs) is progressing according to plan and will arrive in Brazil early next month, said Angola Cables CEO António Nunes in a statement.
Construction work on the landing station and data centre in Fortaleza, Brazil is also progressing well, the company said.
Nunes said that following the completion of the installation work, a period of testing will begin and the company expects to have the cable fully operational by the third quarter of 2018.
The cable system spans about 6 300km and will have a capacity of 40Tbit/s, with a latency (network round-trip time) between South America and Africa of about 63 milliseconds. “This represents a significant improvement in performance when compared to the existing link of 350ms,” Nunes said.
Sacs will connect to South African telecommunications and operators using existing subsea cable systems running along Africa’s west coast to Cape Town.
“From a global traffic perspective, the introduction of Sacs between Angola and Brazil opens a new routing,” he added. “South America will be able to reach Europe and Asia, avoiding the US, and Africa will be able to reach the US without linking through Europe.”
Through Sacs, southern hemisphere countries will be more connected and in a better position to drive the development of the region’s digital economy, he said. — (c) 2018 NewsCentral Media
