Recently the submarine cable was put into operation BAGS, the first and fastest connection between the African continent and the Americas, with the lowest latency and the ability to provide more direct routing for Internet traffic in the Southern Hemisphere.
But it seems that things will not stop there, since it is already begun the planning of a new submarine cable called South Atlantic Express (SAEx), which will connect North America, South America, Asia and Africa. This announcement was made official by SAEx International Ltd and Alcatel Submarine Networks, a subsidiary of Nokia, when signing an agreement to start the research activity for the new 25.000 km submarine cable network.
Second Rosalind Thomas (Managing Director of SAEx), “SAEx will support efficiency in Asian and African connectivity, adding a low-latency direct route capable of meeting the growing capacity requirements for data center interconnection globally. In addition, South Africa's positioning as a global hub will further evolve, providing a direct link between the Americas and Asia, simplifying and improving communications between the 5 most populous countries in the world ”.
More high speed cables for Africa
O SAEx will not be the first cable to connect Africa to South America or Asia. At the end of September of 2018, the South Atlantic Cable System (BAGS) became the first submarine cable to connect directly to Africa (Angola) with South America (Brazil). This joins the long submarine cables of the SEACOM (which mainly cover the east coast of Africa and the connection with Europe) and the WACS (West African Cable System), covers the west coast of Africa).
The advantage of having all these cables connected directly to the African continent is the reduction in latency. The other reason, among many other reasons, is that, as we have witnessed with SEACOM in southern and eastern Africa, cable can directly affect consumer prices positively as more Points of Presence (PoPs) are set in the interior. And from the commercial point of view, this opens up many opportunities, not only in the telecommunications sector, but also in the media and content sectors.
