Alcatel-Lucent has won the contract to build the $600 million final link in the West Africa Cable System.
The vendor will build out a 2,000km extension connecting Portugal to the UK, boosting the cable’s overall capacity that will help WACS compete against two existing networks when opens for business in 2011.
Alcatel-Lucent said the WACS cable would have a capacity of 5.12 Tbps once the extension is complete, up from 3.8 Tbps at present.
Competitor Main One Cable has built a 7,000km-long Africa to Europe subsea system with 2 Tbps capacity.
Both firms are vying for a slice of the underserved African market, which WACS chairman Kobus Stoeder said “is definitely one of the continents still yearning for affordable connectivity.”
The cable company is a consortium of 12 companies, including MTN, Portugal Telecom, Tata Communications, Telecom Namibia and Vodacom.