Quick connection

A 6 000km sub-sea cable system between Africa and South America will enhance communications between the two continents.

The installation of the South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL), a transatlantic fibre-optic cable with a 25-year life span, has been completed and marks a world first in which the two continents are fully connected to their respective landing stations: Kribi in Cameroon and Fortaleza in Brazil.

The SAIL cable system will utilise 100G transmission technology and is designed to deliver a capacity of 32 Tbps through a four-fibre pair configuration. The project, a joint venture between China Unicom and CAMTEL, was carried out by Huawei Marine Networks.

This highlights Africa and Latin America as strategic markets for the global telecoms industry and will positively impact the digital economy in the southern hemisphere’s emerging markets. SAIL will improve the burgeoning worldwide traffic demands by opening up new routing between Africa and North America, Europe and South America. As such, this new connectivity immediately links the BRICS countries of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

‘It is a great pleasure to partner with China Unicom and Huawei Marine on building the SAIL cable system,’ says Camtel general manager David Nkote. ‘When it is completed, it will provide new international connectivity, to facilitate bandwidth demand between Africa and South America and support the booming economies in the two continents.’