WACS switch-on date confirmed
The management committee of the West African Cable System (WACS) announced in a press statement today (30 April 2012) that it would hold a launch event for the new cable on 11 May 2012.
WACS is a 14,500km-long optical fibre submarine cable that aims to link Southern Africa, West Africa and Europe 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, Portugal and the United Kingdom, with a point-of-presence in London.
According to WACS, it is the first cable to land in Namibia, Togo, the Republic of Congo and the DRC, and dramatically increases the international capacity in the other countries it touches.
WACS is a 4-fibre pair, 128-wavelength system, with a design capacity of 5.12Tbps and an open access policy.
The investors in the the $650 million WACS project are Angola Cables, Broadband Infraco, Cable and Wireless Worldwide, Cabo Verde Telecom, Congo Telecom, MTN Group, Portugal Telecom, SCPT (DRC), Tata Communications / Neotel, Telecom Namibia, Telkom SA, Togo Telecom, Vodacom Group and Vodafone Spain.
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