Cable type | Submarine communications cable |
---|---|
Fate | planned |
Design capacity | 60 Tbit/s |
Built by | TE SubCom [1] |
Area served | East African coast |
The DARE (Djibouti Africa Regional Express) submarine communications cable is a planned cable system along the east coast of Africa between Tanzania and Yemen managed by a consortium of 7 operators.
Current members of the consortium are:
The ACE system uses wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology, which is currently the most advanced for submarine cables. With WDM, cable capacity can be increased without additional submarine work. With an overall potential capacity of 5.12 Tbit/s, the system will support the 40 Gbit/s technology from its launch.
The cable landing points are planned to be in the following countries and territories: [2]
List of international submarine communications cables
Individual cable systems off the east coast of Africa include:
SAT-3/WASC or South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable is a submarine communications cable linking Portugal and Spain to South Africa, with connections to several West African countries along the route.
The Eastern Africa Submarine Cable System (EASSy) is an undersea fibre optic cable system connecting countries in Eastern Africa to the rest of the world.
SEA-ME-WE3 or South-East Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 3 is an optical submarine telecommunications cable linking those regions and is the longest in the world. Completed in late 2000, it is led by France Telecom and China Telecom, and is administered by Singtel, a telecommunications operator owned by the Government of Singapore. The Consortium is formed by 92 other investors from the telecom industry. It was commissioned in March 2000.
South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France. It is intended to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable.
The Internet in South Africa, one of the most technologically resourced countries on the African continent, is expanding. The internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .za is managed and regulated by the .za Domain Name Authority (.ZADNA) and was granted to South Africa by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1990. Over 60% of Internet traffic generated on the African continent originates from South Africa. As of 2020, 41.5 million people were Internet users.
SEACOM launched Africa's first broadband submarine cable system along the continent's Southern coasts in 2009. SEACOM is privately owned and operated.
The Main One Cable is a submarine communications cable stretching from Portugal to South Africa with landings along the route in various west African countries. On April 28, 2008, it was announced that Main Street Technologies has awarded a turnkey supply contract for the Main One Cable System to Tyco Telecommunications.
Europe India Gateway (EIG) is a submarine communications cable system that connects the U.K., Portugal, Gibraltar, Monaco, France, Libya, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman, United Arab Emirates, and India.
The West Africa Cable System (WACS) is a submarine communications cable linking South Africa with the United Kingdom along the west coast of Africa that was constructed by Alcatel-Lucent. The cable consists of four fibre pairs and is 14,530 km in length, linking from Yzerfontein in the Western Cape of South Africa to London in the United Kingdom. It has 14 landing points, 12 along the western coast of Africa and 2 in Europe completed on land by a cable termination station in London. The total cost for the cable system is $650 million. WACS was originally known as the Africa West Coast Cable (AWCC) and was planned to branch to South America but this was dropped and the system eventually became the West African Cable System.
Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) is an optical-fiber submarine cable system serving 24 countries on the Europe, west coast and south Africa, managed by a consortium of 20 members.
Broadband is a term normally considered to be synonymous with a high-speed connection to the internet. Suitability for certain applications, or technically a certain quality of service, is often assumed. For instance, low round trip delay would normally be assumed to be well under 150ms and suitable for Voice over IP, online gaming, financial trading especially arbitrage, virtual private networks and other latency-sensitive applications. This would rule out satellite Internet as inherently high-latency. In some applications, utility-grade reliability or security are often also assumed or defined as requirements. There is no single definition of broadband and official plans may refer to any or none of these criteria.
Gulf Bridge International (GBI) is the Middle East's first privately owned submarine cable system linking the countries bordering the Persian Gulf on a self-healing ring to each other and onward to Europe, Africa and Asia. Gulf Bridge International (GBI), both owns and operates this submarine cable asset as a carrier's carrier as well as offering a full suite of wholesale transmission, IP capacity options, and Enterprise Services. Its main headquarters are located at the Qatar Science & Technology Park in Doha, Qatar.
The South Atlantic Cable System or SACS, is a submarine communications cable in the South Atlantic Ocean linking Luanda, Angola with Fortaleza, Brazil with a leg connecting the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha as well. It is the first low latency routing between Africa and South America.
La Guinéenne de la Large Bande is a limited company in charge of managing the capacity allocated to Guinea on the Africa Coast Europe submarine cable (ACE) since March 2013.
South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 5 is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore and France.
West Indian Ocean Cable Company (WIOCC) operates as a wholesaler, providing capacity to international telecoms, cloud operators, content providers and internet service providers within and out of Africa. WIOCC offers carriers connectivity to over 550 locations across 30 African countries – utilising more than 75,000 km (47,000 mi) of terrestrial fibre and 200,000 km (120,000 mi) of submarine fibre-optic cable. WIOCC's international network reach currently extends to 100 cities in 29 countries in Europe and more than 700 cities in 70 countries globally.
Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) is a 25,000 km submarine communications cable system from South East Asia to Europe across Egypt, connecting Hong Kong, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Myanmar, India, Pakistan, Oman, UAE, Qatar, Yemen, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and France. The AAE-1 cable has capacity of at least 40 terabits per second (Tbit/s) to supply the broadband market across Asia, Africa and Europe. In July 2017, it was launched for commercial services and is the longest submarine cable system in over a decade.
South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 6 is an in-progress optical fibre submarine communications cable system that would carry telecommunications between Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. Construction began in early 2022. It is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2025 The expected cable length is 19,200 km and it has a design capacity of 126 Tbit/s, using SDM technology.