The West Africa Cable System (WACS) upgrade # 1 project kick-off meeting is currently underway and is being hosted by Telecom Namibia in the capital Windhoek.
Global telecoms operators from South Africa, Botswana, Angola, DRC, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde Islands, Spain, Portugal, UK, India and Canada are being represented at this meeting at Hilton Hotel in Windhoek. WACS is a submarine fibre optic cable that links countries in Southern Africa, Western Africa and Europe. WACS is based on a consortium model and is a joint effort of a number of African and global telecoms operators.
The system was officially commissioned in May 2012 and since then the bandwidth uptake has been quite enormous. This has forced the WACS consortium to go out on tender to upgrade the system.
The tendering process was finalised and the supplier appointed in December 2014. The consortium therefore scheduled the WACS upgrade #1 project kick-off meeting in Namibia.
The system upgrade process will be undertaken in two phases, with phase 1 expected to be completed by end of June 2015 while phase 2 will be ready by end of October 2015.
The current upgrade will increase the capacity of the upgrading parties from 11 percent to 45 percent of their total capacity entitlement of the WACS system design capacity. Subsequent upgrade phases will be implemented in the future depending on the future bandwidth demand until parties reach their 100 percent WACS design capacity entitlement.
The Swakopmund Landing Station serves as a broadband gateway to the world for Namibia’s ICT industry. The station is also currently transiting for land-locked countries like Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. This therefore reflects the importance of WACS as an asset not only to Namibia but to the SADC region, Africa and the world at large.
The meeting started on Tuesday and will conclude on 13 March. Enditem
Source:?Xinhua
