{"id":12209,"date":"2012-05-11T10:26:51","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T08:26:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=12209"},"modified":"2012-05-11T17:23:04","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T15:23:04","slug":"wacs-launches-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/telecommunications\/12209\/wacs-launches-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"WACS launches in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

The West Africa Cable System (WACS)<\/a> was launched today (11 May 2012), increasing South Africa\u2019s international bandwidth capacity by 5.12Tbps and providing the country with another submarine cable system on the West Coast of Africa.<\/p>\n

The 17,200km WACS fibre optic submarine cable system will immediately raise South Africa\u2019s current broadband capacity by more than 500Gbps, with the potential to grow further as bandwidth is needed.<\/p>\n

WACS spans the west coast of Africa, starting at Yzerfontein near Cape Town, South Africa and terminating in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

The 4-fibre pair submarine cable system was constructed at an approximate total project cost of US$650 million.<\/p>\n

Many telecommunications providers in South Africa have welcomed the arrival of WACS which promises to further drive down bandwidth prices and increase connectivity service levels in the country.<\/p>\n

MTN<\/strong><\/p>\n

MTN<\/a>, a tier 1 investor in WACS, said that WACS will be a \u201cmuch-needed boost to MTN in South Africa, where consumer appetite for data quadrupled during 2011\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cData consumption is up by approximately 200% year-on-year. In the same period, smartphones usage increased by 128% to 3.6 million users, while data users soared to 10.9 million,\u201d said MTN.<\/p>\n

\u201cMTN is excited about the prospects brought by the launch of the cable to our markets. MTN\u2019s ownership of WACS, together with our considerable interest in EASSy (Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System)<\/a> will provide MTN with critical route diversity to Europe, from both sides of the continent,\u201d said Kanagaratnam Lambotharan<\/a>, chief technology officer at MTN South Africa.<\/p>\n

MTN\u2019s terrestrial segment of WACS was completed in April this year, with a total provisioned capacity of 60GB. The MTN terrestrial optical network consists of DWDM (Dense wavelength division multiplexing) and ASON (Automatic Switch Optical Network) technology at its core.<\/p>\n

Internet Solutions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sean Nourse<\/a>, the executive for connectivity at Internet Solutions, said that WACS will further boost international broadband competition, reducing pricing, and providing the continent with the means to grow exponentially in terms of data consumption.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo date, Africa has been a consumer of content produced by the US and Europe \u2013 often as a result of restrictive or non-existent access to broadband Internet,\u201d said Nourse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the so-called \u201cbroadband abundance\u201d now at our disposal, and in conjunction with ICASA’s<\/a> laudable ruling on the IPC cost, we can expect to see enormous social and economic changes in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related articles<\/strong><\/p>\n

WACS switch-on date confirmed<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

BRICS communications network planned by SA company<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

eFive: SAex cable plans on track<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SEACOM\u2019s continued evolution<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The West Africa Cable System (WACS) was launched today (11 May 2012), increasing South Africa\u2019s international bandwidth capacity by 5.12Tbps and providing the country with another submarine cable system on the West Coast of Africa.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11143,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[26,97,2752,28,2750,713],"class_list":["post-12209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-telecommunications","tag-headline","tag-internet-solutions","tag-kanagaratnam-lambotharan","tag-mtn","tag-sean-nourse","tag-wacs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12209"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12212,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12209\/revisions\/12212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}