Telecom Lead Europe: Alcatel-Lucent has signed an agreement with Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) consortium for the maintenance of more than 6,300km of the ACE system linking Africa to Portugal.
The partnership strengthens Alcatel-Lucent’s role as a marine service provider, helping operators ensure optimal network availability and quality of service.
Alcatel-Lucent delivers a wide range of installation and commissioning, and marine operations and maintenance performed by its fleet of seven cable ships. Alcatel-Lucent also offers related services, including the Atlantic Private Maintenance Agreement (APMA), and currently maintains over 300,000 km of critical submarine cable infrastructure worldwide.
ACE interconnects today 15 African countries, seven of which has been connected to the global Internet backbone for the first time. With an ultimate design capacity of 5.12 Terabit/s, ACE provides a high speed data network that cost-effectively support innovative broadband services such as e-education and healthcare applications and that is designed to address present and future needs for connectivity and capacity.
The overall system spans 17,000 km linking South Africa to France – via Namibia, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Principe, Cameroon, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, The Gambia, Senegal, Mauritania, Tenerife (Spain) and Portugal.
In another related development Alcatel-Lucent signed a similar contract with the West Africa Cable System (WACS) consortium for the maintenance of more than 9,000km of the WACS system linking South Africa to Portugal.
WACS interconnects 13 African countries, unleashing a new wave of broadband capacity on the continent and enhancing international connectivity.
In delivering high-speed bandwidth of more than five terabits-per-second, the WACS infrastructure provides open access to regional telecom operators and Internet service providers. Furthermore, it contributes to opening up broadband in Africa, lowering the cost of access and allowing the delivery of innovative applications such as e-education and e-health, contributing to the improvement of people’s lives.
