Submarine Networks reports that Huawei Marine has signed contracts in Shanghai with China Unicom and Camtel to deliver the South Atlantic Inter-Link. China Unicom do Brasil, China Unicom and Camtel comprise the consortium that will own and operate the SAIL cable.
SAIL will join South America and Africa, two areas of the world that need more bandwidth. Currently traffic from these continents has to cross the North Atlantic, with increases in latency and cost. It follows a 6000km route between Fortaleza, Brazil and Kribi, Cameroon. The cable is of 4 pairs with a design capacity of 32Tb/s. It has a ready for service date at the end of 2018.
“China has strategic partnerships with Africa and South America. SAIL cable system not only provides high-quality international telecommunication services to countries in these two continent, but also better serves Chinese companies to develop their business in these region.” – Lu Yimin, CEO, China Unicom
“It is a great pleasure to partner with China Unicom and Huawei Marine on building the SAIL cable system. When it completed, it will provide new international connectivity, to facilitate bandwidth demand between Africa and South America and support the booming economies in the two continents.” – David Nkote, General Manager, Camtel
As cables have long lead times, it’s already in the sub-sea cable maps, just not as an active path.