Internet service in central and southern Africa is impacted by simultaneous outages on the West African Cable System (WACS) & the SAT3 cable.
The break in the WACS system is believed to have occurred near Libreville, Gabon, while the break in the SAT3 cable reportedly happened near Luanda, Angola.
West Africa Cable System upgraded to 32X100G
The West Africa Cable System (WACS) has been successfully upgraded to 32*100G wavelengths configured on the longest optically amplified single fiber span stretching 11500km from South Africa to Portugal. WACS has two network operation centers and 15 landing points in 14 countries spanning West Africa and Europe.
Huawei Marine, which was the contractor, said the upgrade employed Flex Grid and Optical pass-through technologies, and now represents the world’s longest 100G system.
ALU Completes SAT-3/WASC Undersea Cable Upgrade
Alcatel-Lucent completed the fourth upgrade of the SAT-3/WASC undersea cable system, which now offers 40 Gbps connections, full in-system protection, and one of the lowest latency routes between Europe, West Coast of Africa and Southern Africa.
The SAT-3/WASC cable system was upgraded from 420 Gbps to 920 Gbps in the northern segments, north of Ghana, and from 340 Gbps to 800 Gbps in the southern segments. Overall, this fourth upgrade enables a sevenfold increase in SAT-3/WASC’s original design capacity through the use of Alcatel-Lucent’s advanced coherent technology.
This latest upgrade went live during the first half of 2014.
The SAFE cable provides on-going connections via the shortest route and therefore lowest latency between Southern Africa and Asia with connectivity via South Africa, Mauritius, Reunion, India and Malaysia.
