TM GLOBAL, the global and wholesale arm of Telekom Malaysia, and Angola Cables have been exploring a new express route connecting the southern hemisphere subsea cables from Asia directly to South America.
A Proof of Concept (PoC) testing is being conducted by both parties leveraging two (2) cable systems; the South Africa Far East cable system (SAFE), connecting Malaysia to Angola, and South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) connecting Angola to Brazil owned by both parties respectively.
The carriers report a significant reduction in latency as compared to the current northern hemisphere routes by bypassing the Middle East and Europe.
South Atlantic Cable System ready for service with Angola-Brazil
The South Atlantic Cable System (SACS), which is a 40 Tbps, 6,165 km cable linking Angola to Brazil, is now on-stream and open for commercial traffic.
SACS features four fibre pairs, with each fibre pair capable of transmitting 100 wavelengths at 100 Gbps. NEC served as lead contractor on the project.
The SACS cable system lands at Sangano cable landing station in Angola, near the capital city of Luanda, and will provide onward connectivity to the Angonap data center. In Brazil, SACS lands directly in a newly constructed data center, which was built together with SACS and for another cable system connecting Brazil to the U.S.A.
SACS is 100% owned by Angola Cables.
SACS was partially funded by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) through a loan agreement in buyer’s credit with Banco de Desenvolvimento de Angola (BDA), the state-owned development bank of Angola. The loan was co-financed with Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) with Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI) providing insurance for the portion financed by SMBC.
