The South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL) consortium has completed the close to 6 000km marine installation of its 25-year life-span transatlantic fibre optic subsea cable.
This marks a significant milestone: for the first time, Africa and South America are fully connected to their respective landing stations: Kribi in Cameroon and Fortaleza in Brazil.
The entire project was carried out by Huawei Marine Networks. It is a joint investment by China Unicom (with its wholly-owned subsidiary, China Unicom do Brasil Telecomunicacoes Ltda) and CAMTEL.
The SAIL cable system has been designed to be a fast and direct path, utilising the industry leading 100G transmission technology and to deliver a design capacity of 32Tbps, through a 4-fibre pair configuration since its inception in 2016.
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 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 in the southern hemisphere, will be more connected and in a better position to drive the development of the region’s digital economy.