WACS submarine fibre cable deployment progressing well
Over the last year and a half South Africa has gone from a country hamstrung by a single submarine cable system to a competitive international bandwidth environment with both SEACOM and EASSy battling for market share against SAT-3/SAFE.
Soon to join the fray is the West Africa Cable System (better known as WACS) which will connect South Africa and various other African countries to Europe. WACS is set to become operational in the second half of 2011, competing directly against SAT-3 for international connectivity on the West Coast of Africa.
This new submarine cable system is a joint venture between Telkom, Neotel, MTN, Vodacom and Broadband Infraco. They will jointly land the WACS cable in South Africa.
Deployment of WACS began in 2009, with an initial design capacity of 3.81 Terrabits per second (Tbps). This capacity was later increased to 5.12 Tbps.
The good news is that the deployment of WACS is progressing particularly well. According to Kobus Stroeder, former chairman of the WACS Management Committee, the submarine portion of the cable which connects South Africa with Portugal is two thirds complete.
Stroeder added that the submarine portion of the cable system is expected to be completed in early 2011 and they are on track to start carrying traffic in the second half of 2011.
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