SAIL consortium completes Cameroon to Brazil cable connectivity

05 September 2018 | Jason McGee-Abe

The South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL) consortium has completed the marine installation of the 6,000km transatlantic fibre-optic subsea cable.

This marks a significant milestone: for the first time, two continents, Africa and the Americas, are fully connected in the southern hemisphere to their respective landing stations, Kribi in Cameroon and Fortaleza in Brazil.

The SAIL cable system, which has a 25-year lifespan, has been designed to be fast and direct and will utilise 100G transmission technology to deliver a design capacity of 32Tbps, through a four-fibre pair configuration.

“With the rapid development of global infrastructure and a massive surge in worldwide internet traffic, Africa and Latin America are becoming strategic emerging markets of the global telecommunications industry,” the company announced.

“The introduction of SAIL meets the traffic demands from the emerging markets, and also opens a new routing through diverse paths between Africa and North America, Europe and South America. Through the launch of SAIL, countries in these regions, especially the southern hemisphere countries will be more connected and in a better position to drive the development of the region’s digital economy.”

As an important infrastructure investment, the SAIL cable will positively impact the current communications market in the southern hemisphere. It will allow immediate links of the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. There will be connections to Brazil and South Africa, plus connections to China, Russia and India in Eurasia. This will reinforce increasing communication demand and drive rapid expansion of global emerging markets in these areas.

SAIL is a joint investment by China Unicom, via its wholly-owned subsidiary, China Unicom do Brasil Telecomunicacoes, and Camtel of Cameroon. The entire project has been carried out by Huawei Marine Networks.