France Telecom\fOrange has\u00a0announced\u00a0that\u00a0the Africa Coast to Europe (Ace) submarine cable is now operational for the first phase linking France and Sao Tom\u00e9 & Principe.<\/p>\n
The cable, which will extend down to South Africa for the second phase, provides connectivity to broadband internet in Africa and will add extra capacity to existing international networks, France Telecom\fOrange\u00a0said.<\/p>\n
Nearly 12,000 km of optical fibre running along the west coast of Africa have been deployed to connect\u00a013 countries\u00a0from France to Sao Tom\u00e9 & Principe.<\/p>\n
Two landlocked countries, Mali and Niger, will also be\u00a0connected through extensions to the terrestrial network. Finally, Nigeria will also be connected to the\u00a0cable in 2013.<\/p>\n
Seven of these countries \u2013 The Gambia, Guinea, Equatorial Guinea, Liberia, Mauritania, Sao Tom\u00e9 & Principe and Sierra Leone \u2013 will benefit for the first time from a direct connection to a submarine cable.<\/p>\n
The commissioning of this first phase marks the beginning of the deployment plan for the Ace submarine\u00a0cable, which will ultimately run for a total of approximately 17,000 km. Seven additional countries\u00a0will be\u00a0connected in the second phase.<\/p>\n
France Telecom\u0016Orange, together with its subsidiaries C\u00f4te d’Ivoire Telecom, Orange Cameroon, Orange Mali, Orange Niger and Sonatel, have combined forces with other
\nmajor partners to form an international consortium.<\/p>\n
The cable\u2019s construction amounts to a total investment of around U$700 million for the consortium,\u00a0with around $250 million financed by the group and its subsidiaries.<\/p>\n
Through links to other submarine cables, Ace also provides an additional western route for traffic between Europe and Asia via Africa.<\/p>\n
ACE relies on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM), which enables it to up capacity without additional submarine work. Overall capacity will be boosted to 5.12 Tbps using the new 40 Gbps technology which supports ultra\u0016high speed broadband networks.<\/p>\n
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