The WACS consortium and Alcatel-Lucent have signed a contract valued at US $700m to deploy a new submarine cable network that will provide the first direct connection between Southern Africa and Europe.

Named the West Africa Cable System (WACS), this 14,000 km-long submarine network system will bolster Internet and other communications capabilities to and from the African continent.

The 11 parties that form the consortium are Angola Telecom, Broadband Infraco, Cable & Wireless, MTN, Portugal Telecom, Sotelco, Tata Communications, Telecom Namibia, Telkom SA, Togo Telecom and Vodacom.

WACS will open access to faster connectivity to support IP-based services such as video applications for e-education and healthcare. Meeting the needs for increased capacity along the cable route, it will further reduce the digital divide, enabling the landing countries to be served by a new system offering greater capacity and lowering the cost of broadband access. With commercial service expected in 2011, this new submarine cable system will also offer route diversity and bandwidth availability, and the first global submarine fibre connection to Namibia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Togo and the Republic of Congo.

Kobus Stoeder, Chairperson of the consortium’s Management Committee, commented, “WACS has brought together a multitude of nations and some of the world's most influential telecommunications players in a joint effort to use state-of-the-art technology in linking more people more efficiently than ever before.”