Telecom

WACS consortium and Alcatel-Lucent sign contract

By Team Diginews4u ⋅ April 13, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅ Post a comment

The WACS consortium and Alcatel-Lucent have signed a turnkey contract valued at several hundred million US dollars to deploy a new submarine cable network that will provide the first direct connection between Southern Africa and Europe.

Named the West Africa Cable System (WACS), this 14,000 km-long submarine network system is expected to bolster internet and other communications capabilities to and from the African continent.

The 11 parties that form the consortium are Angola Telecom, Broadband Infraco, Cable & Wireless, MTN, Portugal Telecom, Sotelco, Tata Communications, Telecom Namibia, Telkom SA, Togo Telecom and Vodacom.

WACS is expected to open access to faster connectivity to support IP-based services such as video applications for e-education and healthcare.

Under the terms of the contract, Alcatel-Lucent will provide connectivity between South Africa and Portugal. With a minimum design capacity of 3.84 Terabit/s, WACS will connect South Africa to the UK with landings in Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, and Portugal.

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Tags: Cable, Education, Health, Wireless