Faster Internet here soon

TELECOM Namibia is set to announce the connection of the country to the West Africa Cable System (WACS) tomorrow.

WACS is a fibre-optic submarine communications cable which links South Africa with the United Kingdom running along the west coast of Africa. The WACS consortium consists of 12 countries and the cable is expected to land in the following African countries: South Africa, Namibia, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Cape Verde and the Canary Islands. The cable will provide a direct connection to the global submarine cable network, and can carry 5.12 terragigs of communication.The landings in Namibia, the DRC, the Republic of Congo and Togo will provide these countries with their first direct access to the global submarine cable network. The direct access, it is hoped, will provide up to ten times faster Internet and more robust inter-connectivity to Europe and the rest of the world at cheaper rates. To date Namibia has made use of South Africa’s telecommunications network via the South Atlantic 3 (SAT-3) undersea cable, and as a result has had to pay South Africa for transit to the SAT-3 landing station.The WACS project, which comes with a US$600 million price tag to the Consortium, has seen a U$12,5 million investment from MTC. The investment has facilitated Namibia’s connection to the cable system, and will provide its customers with Internet access on par with first-world services.A source within Telecom Namibia has revealed to The Namibian that the infrastructure for connecting the cable to Telecom’s nationwide network was completed last year. It is expected that the fibre-optic cable will be operational from August 2012.