Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks is set to roll out the second phase of the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) submarine cable system. The cable system will be a 5,000km extension that will run from the Gulf of Guinea Island of Sao Tomé-et-Principe to South Africa, bringing the overall system distance to 17,000km.
This extension will use Alcatel-Lucent’s 100 gigabit-per-second (Gbit/s) submarine technology. The company says that on completion of the Phase 2 extension, “the ACE system will deliver an overall design capacity of 12.8 Tbit/s which represents a significant upgrade in broadband delivery.” It adds that the extension will “support the cost-effective delivery of broadband services and digital applications for education, healthcare and other e-services, reaching an additional 200 million people.”
According to Alcatel-Lucent, 13 of the 16 countries that will be connected by the ACE are African countries and seven of them “were connected to the global Internet backbone for the first time when the cable system came on-stream in December 2012.” The Phase 2 will link Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo-Brazzaville and South Africa. It will include an extension to Cameroon.
Yves Ruggeri, Chairman of the ACE Management Committee, said that “the extension of the ACE system to South Africa is a significant milestone that confirms our commitment to address the connectivity challenges facing Africa.”
He added that “ASN’s know-how and technological innovations, which we have recently tested on our existing network, will support us in further developing direct connectivity within Africa and to the overall objective of ACE to reduce communication costs and drive social and economic growth in the continent.”
President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, Philippe Dumont, also stated, “further development of the ACE system underlines the demand for bandwidth, to broaden opportunities in terms of connectivity, data and information sharing.”
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