The West African Cable System (Wacs) will land on SA shores early in April, bringing the construction phase of the project to an end. However, its commercial launch has been pushed back by a few months to the first quarter of 2012.

Neotel chief technology officer and member of the Wacs management committee Angus Hay says the delay is not unusual, and the cable system is on track to deliver more international capacity to Africa. It was supposed to have been ready for commercial use by the third quarter of 2011.

SA is the final landing point of the cable and it should land at Yzerfontein in the Western Cape on either the 9 or 10 April, says Hay.

Other landing points include Namibia, Angola, Congo-Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, Portugal and the UK.

The original design capacity of Wacs was 3,8Tbit/s, but has subsequently been upgraded to 5,1Tbit/s, making it the highest capacity cable coming to the continent so far. Hay says the design capacity may increase later.

“The cable is essentially built, but now the hard part begins,” says Hay. He says the cable now needs to be commissioned and tested before any live commercial access will be opened. — Candice Jones, TechCentral