Alcatel-Lucent wins contract for new African cable

Africa is yet again to be connected to a new submarine cable system that will provide the Southern Africa region the first direct connection with Europe under a deal with Alcatel-Lucent.

The cable will also provide connectivity between the western African region and Europe, Africa's active communication destination. The 14,000-kilometer-long submarine cable system, dubbed West Africa Cable System (WACS), will provide high-capacity international bandwidth and is aimed at bolstering Africa's Internet and other communications capabilities to and from Africa.

However, the African region already has a number of submarine cable projects aimed at providing broadband services to the region, including the East Africa submarine cable project (EASSY), the SEACOM project and the East Africa marine system (Teams).

Alcatel-Lucent Tuesday signed the contract with WACS to deploy the submarine cable system. The total cost of the cable has not yet been revealed.

The 11 parties that form the WACS consortium include Mobile Telecommunication Network (MTN), Angola Telecom, Broadband Infraco, Telkom Namibia, Tata Communications, Portugal Telecom and Telkom South Africa.

With commercial service expected in 2011, the new cable system will also offer route diversity and bandwidth availability, and will be the first submarine fiber connection to Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Togo and the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville).

Kobus Stoeder, WACS chairperson of the consortium's management committee, said the cable will enable countries to improve communications and Internet services that are crucial for social and economic development.

"By meeting the requirements of communications infrastructures in terms of flexibility and scalability, we help our customers to enhance their capacity and deliver a more seamless and reliable service," Stoeder said.

WACS will open access to faster connectivity to the Southern and West Africa regions to support innovative Internet Protocol-based services such as video applications for e-education and health care.

Under the terms of the contract, Alcatel-Lucent will provide connectivity between South Africa and Portugal. With a minimum design capacity of 3.84 terabits per second, WACS will connect South Africa to the U.K. with landing points 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.

The WACS consortium hopes that the cable will provide the landing countries greater capacity and lower the cost of broadband access, which will reduce the high cost of communication.

Stoeder said WACS has brought together a multitude of nations and some of the world's most influential telecom players in a joint effort to use state-of-the-art technology in reaching more people efficiently.