South Atlantic Cable System goes live
The Angola Cables owned SACS has been manufactured and powered by NEC Corporation and is one of the most advanced submarine telecommunications systems to go into commercial operation connecting Angola (Africa) and Brazil (South America).
Data transfer speeds will be greatly improved (five times faster than existing cable routings), reducing latency from Fortaleza (Brazil) to Luanda (Angola) from 350ms to 63ms. Luanda will also connect to London and Miami with approximately 128 milliseconds latency. These two major content hubs will position Angola as a strategic point to serve the transatlantic region with low latency and resilient connections.
Given the onward connections to the recently completed Monet Cable and the West Africa Cable System (WACS), SACS will also offer reduced latency between Miami (USA) and Cape Town (South Africa) from 338ms to 163ms.
SACS offers a high quality of service and improved latency of up to 60% over current routing options. The cable will also contribute to reductions in data traffic costs between South America and Africa, offering savings to operators that in turn, could be passed onto end-users and customers.
Direct communications
António Nunes, CEO of Angola Cables said that the commercialisation of the cable is ‘more than just a game-changer’ when it comes to data connectivity and services between the two continents. It is estimated that direct communications between Africa and the Americas will generate multiple advantages worldwide for internet service providers (ISP’s), Cloud Service Providers (CSP’s) and Over the Top Content Providers (OTT’s) making use of these connections.
The new routing will dynamically change the internet traffic patterns within the Southern Hemisphere and combined with Monet & WACS, will dramatically alter global digital traffic routing options.
SACS is a new thoroughfare for data between networks, major content providers and some of the fastest growing markets for data consumption.
“Our ambition is to transport South American and Asian data packets via our African hub using SACS, and together with Monet and the WACS, provide a more efficient direct connectivity option between North, Central and South America onto Africa, Europe and Asia. By developing and connecting ecosystems that allows for local IP traffic to be exchanged locally and regionally, the efficiency of networks that are serving the Southern Hemisphere can be vastly improved. As these developments progress they will have considerable impact for the future growth and configuration of the global internet,” says Nunes.
