IS increases WACS connectivity in West Africa

"This is an important strategic step in our African expansion plans, having acquired significant capacity on the 5.12Tbps undersea fibre optic cable," explains Sean Nourse, executive: Connectivity Services at IS. "A number of our South African clients are also expanding internationally or have established operations in these regions. They therefore require the capabilities to connect with these key economic hubs in West Africa. There is also a growing need to provide high speed outbound international broadband connectivity to the rapidly growing enterprise and small-to-medium-sized business market in these regions."

Greater diversity and increased capacity for Africa's west coast

According to Nourse, these links now offer IS clients greater diversity up the west coast of Africa as it complements existing SAT-3 capacity. In the case of Namibia, it is also the first time that the country has been linked to an undersea fibre optic cable system. The connection has been made possible through IS's local implementation partner, ITN, which holds ECS and ECNS licences in Namibia.

"With the launch of this connectivity in Nigeria and Namibia IS has become one of the first providers to go to market with WACS capacity," he continues. "This means that our current MPLS clients will benefit from a more stable and resilient international network, with redundancy up the west coast, at no additional cost. In fact, we are now in a position to offer better rates on various international services due to the added capacity."

Helping drive growth in West Africa

It also opens up the market to companies in these regions that want access to the IS data centre network in South Africa and Europe, explains Nourse. "This enables us to offer companies a variety of services and applications that were not always practical in the past due to bandwidth constraints such as IP-based communication, including VoIP and video conferencing, as well as content sharing, collaboration tools, e-commerce and centralised cloud computing services."

Additional West African countries earmarked for links to WACS include Angola and Ghana. "Angola is currently only linked to the SAT-3 cable. We will therefore light up WACS capacity to support our customers that operate there, enabling us to offer better pricing and reliability," says Nourse.

"As the powerhouses of West Africa, we are excited to see how this WACS capacity will help to drive further growth in these regions through the improved international communication, collaboration and e-commerce capabilities it offers," he concludes.

For more information, go to www.is.co.za.