South Africa and Angola experience contrasting internet cable fates

A submarine landslide in the Congo Canyon, one of the world's largest submarine canyons, disrupted the West African Cable System (WACS) and South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable (SAT-3) undersea cables on Sunday. 

The Congo Canyon cuts through the continental shelf and slope of western equatorial Africa in the South Atlantic Ocean. WACS, which is one of the main connections between South Africa and Europe along the African west coast and ends in the United Kingdom, follows along this path.

The cable has four fibre pairs, 15 terminal stations, and a total length of 16,000 kilometres. It is owned by a consortium of 18 international telecom carriers. SAT-3 is an older cable system - operational since 2001 - with a capacity of 120Gbps.

MyBroadband reported that it might take more than a month for a cable repair ship to reach the WACS break location. However, Openserve, the wholesale and networks division of Telkom, said that its operations would not be significantly affected.

More capacity for Africa

In contrast, Angola had positive cable news last week when the 2Africa subsea cable landed in Luanda, the capital city. This landing is the first major part of the West African side of the 2Africa cable, which starts at MTN's Yzerfontein landing station in South Africa.

Meta and seven other partners announced the 2Africa cable in 2020. Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) will manufacture and deploy the 45,000km, 16-fibre pair, 180Tbps cable. 

2Africa will connect 33 countries with 46 landing points across Africa, Europe, and Asia when it is complete in 2024.