Submarine cable deployed in Angola to link Africa to South America

The project of deploying the first submarine telecommunication cable in the South Atlantic ocean linking Africa to South America has been launched in Angola’s capital Luanda.

The launch of the fibre-optic South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) follows months of marine survey that was completed by multinational telecommunications company Angola Cables in April.

The undersea cable deployment, expected to be completed by the middle of 2018, was rolled out on Wednesday, August 9, 2017, from the Angolan coastline in Sangano where it was installed, the Angolan news agency ANGOP reported.

The landing point of the 6,165 km SACS cable from Sangano is in the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha in Fortaleza.

CEO of Angola Cables, António Nunes, said if completed, communications will be faster and access to content from the Americas will be five times faster.

SACS contains four fibre pairs with each capable of transmitting 100 wavelengths with a bandwidth of 100Gbit/s, he explained.

When completed, SACS will be interconnected with the Monet cable system which connects North America to South America; and the West Africa Cable System (WACS) which connects Africa to Europe.

The cost of the construction is estimated to be over $200 million and funded by Angola Cables which is owned by major Angolan telecommunication companies.

Africa relies widely on the 14,530 km WACS cable which runs from Yzerfontein in the coast of South Africa to London in the United Kingdom.

WACS has four fibre pairs including 14 landing points – 12 along the western coast of Africa (including Cape Verde and Canary Islands) and two in Europe (Portugal and England).

Angola Cables is one of the 12 members of the consortium that manages WACS.