Angolan telecommunications company Angola Cables and Luxembourg-headquartered data centre and cable landing station specialist Etix Everywhere have partnered to build infrastructure to reduce the latency between the US and Africa, thereby eliminating the data route through Europe.
The parties plan to build two cable landing stations and a data centre linked directly to Africa by the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) and Monet submarine cable networks.
“Currently, when data travels from Africa to Latin America, it is transmitted through Europe. Angola Cables’ new submarine cables – Monet and SACS – will dramatically reduce the latency between the US, Latin America and Africa,” said Angola Cables CEO Antonio Nunes, speaking at the AfricaCom conference, in Cape Town.
The first phase of the project, a flagship initiative for Etix, entails the construction of a landing station in Fortaleza, Brazil, and a data centre, also in Brazil, both of which would be completed mid-2017 – in time to be connected with the new submarine cables, Etix CTO Benoît Parisse commented.
In a partnership between Angola Cables, Google, Antel and Algar Telecom, the Monet submarine cable, which is scheduled to be ready for service in mid-2017, will link Miami, in the US, to Fortaleza and São Paulo, in Brazil, while the SACS submarine cable, currently being deployed by Angola Cables, will provide a direct connection between Latin America and Africa.