Details are beginning to emerge about the construction of a new high-capacity submarine telecommunications cable to serve the African continent. Named the Wasace cable, it will be connecting Africa with South America, North America and Europe and will be project managed by the David Ross Group from the United States.
Ramon Gil-Roldan, CEO of the Wasace Cable Company Worldwide, a multinational development company, says that the new cable will be one of the largest in the world and the largest ever mounted in the Atlantic Ocean, that’s purpose is to link all the major markets of the four continents. While it is unknown when the cable will be ready for service, Wasace claims the system will be the first to employ next-generation 100Gbit/s fibre-optic technology, offering “œten times the capacity of previous systems“.
However, eFive Telecommunications CEO Lawrence Mulaudzi, who is leading a rival project that will connect Angola and South Africa to Brazil with a 2,8Tbit/s system called the South Atlantic Express (SAex), claims the SAex cable will be first along this route.
The Wasace cable will be funded by VIP Must and the African Development Bank as well as other unnamed investors from Brazil and other countries.
For five years the African continent was deprived of bandwidth and so billions of Dollars have gone into new submarine cables Seacom,Teams and Eassy to serve the continent on Aits east coast. In the west, the 5,1Tbit/s Wacs and Ace projects are expected to go live in 2012.
source: Tech Central
