MTN ready to land undersea cable in May

A typical under sea cable

By Prince Osuagwu

Africa’s investments in submarine cables prepares to double as  MTN Group’s $90 million West Africa Cable System (WACS) lands at Yzerfontein in the Western Cape, South Africa.
MTN says that its $90million investment in the 14 kilometre-long submarine cable, forms part of a myriad of submarine cables that it has invested in, to bring much-needed broadband capacity to the continent.
The submarine cable when it lands is expected to bolster Africa’s efforts to achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, bridge the digital divide and provide millions of subscribers in Africa and the Middle East the capacity and ability to use smart solutions.
MTN is the single biggest investor in WACS and is expected to receive an initial capacity of 11% when the cable becomes commercially available in the second quarter of this year.
Managing Director MTN South Africa, Karel Pienaar, announced yesterday that “WACS will provide millions of MTN subscribers across Africa the much-needed bandwidth and will go a long way towards catapulting Africa into the digital age”.
He added that lack of bandwidth on the continent has arrested the development of Africa and has constrained the continent from achieving its full potential.
The WACS submarine cable is an ultra high capacity fiber optic submarine cable system which links Southern Africa and Europe, spanning the west coast of Africa and terminating in London, United Kingdom. This $650 million cable system is said to be the biggest to ever land on the Africa continent. It has 15 terminal stations which anchor along the western coast of Africa, including countries like Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Ghana and Ivory Coast.
Pienaar adds that as a multinational corporation with a strong presence in 16 African countries, MTN’s multi-million rand investments in undersea cables is also underpinned by the critical role that telephony has played in contributing meaningfully to gross domestic product (GDP) and alleviating poverty.
According to the figures recently released by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), mobile penetration in Africa is the lowest worldwide at 41%, resulting in Africa lagging behind when it comes to fixed, wired broadband.
From the backdrop of the report Pienaar said that “although subscriptions are increasing, a penetration rate of less than 1% illustrates the challenges that persist in increasing access to high-speed, high capacity internet access in the region. We believe that these investments MTN has made in submarine cables will vault Africa into the digital age and afford our subscribers in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond the capacity and ability to be part of this growing global village,”
Other investments MTN has made in the submarine cable initiative apart from the $90 million in WACS, included a cash injection of $50 million in Europe India Gateway, EIG, a submarine cable initiative that connects Europe and India; $40.3 million in the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System EASSy, another undersea fibre optic cable system connecting countries of eastern Africa to the rest of the world, and $10 million in SAT-3/SAFE linking Portugal and Spain to South Africa, with connections to several West African countries along the route.
Already, MTN has been allocated an initial capacity of 30GB in EASSy, even as it enjoys 317GG of capacity on the EIG cable. These are in line with its investment in the cable

WACS configuration
WACS – a minimum 4-fibre pair cable system linking South Africa (SA) to Portugal, with landings in several intermediate countries and an extension Segment to the United Kingdom (UK) and London Point of Presence
System Design – 5.12 Terabits per second measured at 10Gbps wavelength technology

Initial Equipage – more than 500Gbps
Certain segments will deploy 40Gbps wavelengths technology from first day of operation
Express fibre pair - interconnect SA, Portugal, and UK through to London
Semi-express 1 fibre pair - interconnect SA, Nigeria, and UK through to London
Semi-express 2 fibre pair - interconnect SA, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast and UK through to London
Omnibus Fibre pair - interconnect SA, Namibia, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, Canary Islands, Portugal, UK through to London

The landing Parties
 are: Telkom(South Africa), Telecom Namibia(Namibia), Angola cables(Angola), OCPT(Democratic Republic of Congo), Congo Telecom(Congo), MTN(Cameroon), MTN(Nigeria), Togo Telecom (Togo), MTN(Ghana), MTN(Ivory Coast), PTC(Cape Verde), Vodacom Group(Canary Islands), Tata Communications(Portugal), Tata Communications(UK), Cable and Wireless(London PoP).
Segments are capable of carrying between 128 and 160 x 10Gbps wavelengths per fiber pair.
The WACS Consortium members are: MTN Group, Angola Cables, Broadband Infraco, Cable & Wireless, Congo Telecom, Office Congolais des Postes et Telecommunications (OCPT), PT COMUNICAÇÕES, Togo Telecom, Tata Communications, Telecom Namibia, Telkom SA Ltd and Vodacom Group Ltd.