WACS Arrives Near Cape Town

Submarine communications cable the West Africa Cable System (WACS) has landed in Yzerfontein, near Cape Town. The 14,000km cable, which is expected to dock at 14 different landing points along the Western coast of Africa, before linking to the Canary Islands, Portugal and the UK, is set to commence commercial service in 1Q12. The total capacity of the system is 5.12Tbps, and at least 500Gbps will be lit at launch.

Investors in the WACS cable include South African telcos MTN, Vodacom, Telkom South Africa, Broadband Infraco and Neotel.


Angus Hay, head of strategic business development at Neotel, commented: ‘This is the dawn of a new era in the South African telecommunications industry. 


Since the launch of SEACOM and later EASSy, international bandwidth to South Africa has increased. The landing of WACS sets Neotel ahead of its competitors, as it is the only telecommunications operator that has direct access to all five undersea cables landing in South Africa: WACS, SEACOM, EASSy, SAT-3 and SAFE. 


For Neotel this means that our customers are highly unlikely to experience downtime since the traffic can be moved from one cable to another in case of any cable failure. The level of redundancy, reliability and security will now increase’.

Main One Installation To Ghana & Nigeria Complete

Main One Cable Company has completed the installation of the first phase of its high capacity fibre-optic cable system from Seixal in Portugal through the West African coast to Ghana and Nigeria, This Day reports.

Alongside system supplier Tyco Electronics Subsea Communications (SubCom), Main One has finished installing terminal equipment in Seixal, with work underway at the system's landing sites in Lagos in Nigeria and Accra in Ghana. According to Main One’s CEO, Funke Opeke, Phase 1 of the system spans 6,800km and will provide much-needed international capacity into West Africa where rapid growth in telecoms has been blighted by limited global connectivity.

Phase 2 of the project will see extension of the cable to South Africa. ‘We are thrilled to say that the challenge of completing the marine work for the Main One cable system is behind us and that we will soon be able to concentrate on the critical mission of providing high-capacity bandwidth to regions of the globe where it is long overdue,’ Opeke noted, adding ‘together with SubCom, we have met our goals on schedule and we eagerly look towards delivering capacity to our customers and executing plans for expansion of the network.’

The Main One cable system is scheduled to go live in June 2010.

Africa's Main One Fibre Network For Launch Next Year

The Main One cross-continental submarine fibre-optic network which will connect Africa with the rest of the world is set for launch by mid-next year. The first phase of the project, which spans 7,000km, extends from Seixal in Portugal to Lagos in Nigeria and Accra in Ghana.

Using dense wave multiplexing technology of 1.92Tbps with two fibre pairs, Main One Cable promises to deliver more broadband internet capacity to the West Africa sub region than any other existing or proposed submarine cable projects.

According to Funke Opeke, CEO of Main One Cable Company: 'We are particularly delighted that our desk top research, marine survey, wet plant and dry plant designs have been successfully concluded while our wet plant and dry plant manufacture, respectively, have progressed considerably.

We are also recording considerable progress with regard to the construction of our cable landing stations.' She added that with the Main One project having secured commitments for the entire funding of its first phase, 'practically everything' is in place to ensure that the new cable will be ready for service in June 2010.