Alcatel-Lucent wins $600m WACS submarine cable deal

To provide connectivity between South Africa and Portugal through a 14,000 km submarine network system

Alcatel-Lucent has won a $600m contract with West Africa Cable System, WACS, to deploy a new submarine cable network between Southern Africa and Europe.

WACS is a consortium comprising Angola Telecom, Broadband Infraco, Cable & Wireless, MTN, Portugal Telecom, Sotelco, Tata Communications, Telecom Namibia, Telkom, Togo Telecom, and Vodacom.

Alcatel-Lucent will provide connectivity between South Africa and Portugal through a 14,000 km submarine network system with a minimum design capacity of 3.84 Terabits per second. The network will also connect South Africa to the UK 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, and Portugal. Commercial service is expected to start in 2011.

Kobus Stoeder, chairperson of the consortium's management committee, said: WACS has brought together a multitude of nations and influential telecommunications players in a joint effort to use state-of-the-art technology in linking more people more efficiently than ever before. Alcatel-Lucent combines field-proven experience, reliability, and customer focus needed for such an exciting project.

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