The South Atlantic Cable System (SACS), which will provide a more direct route for Internet traffic in the southern hemisphere, is now on stream and open for commercial traffic.

The system, which is wholly owned by Angola Cables, has been manufactured and powered by NEC Corporation and connects Angola and Brazil.

Data transfer speeds will be greatly improved and will be five times faster than existing cable routings, reducing latency from Fortaleza, Brazil, to Luanda, Angola, from 350 ms to 63 ms.

As a result of the cable system, Luanda will also connect to London, in the UK, and Miami, in the US, with about 128 ms latency.

These two major content hubs will position Angola as a strategic point to serve the transatlantic region with low latency and resilient connections.

Given the onward connections to the recently completed Monet Cable and the West Africa Cable System (WACS), the SACS will also reduce latency between Miami and Cape Town from 338 ms to 163 ms.

Angola Cables states that the SACS offers a high quality of service and improved latency of up to 60% over current routing options. The cable is also expected to contribute to lower data traffic costs between South America and Africa, offering savings to operators that, in turn, could be passed on to end-users.

Angola Cables CEO António Nunes says the commercialisation of the SACS is “more than just a game changer” when it comes to data connectivity and services between Africa and South America.

It is estimated that direct communications between Africa and the Americas will generate multiple advantages worldwide for Internet service providers, cloud service providers and over-the-top content providers making use of these connections.

“The new routing will dynamically change the Internet traffic patterns within the southern hemisphere and, combined with Monet and the WACS, will dramatically alter global digital traffic routing options, “Angola Cables states.

The SACS has been designed with 100 Gb/s coherent wavelength division multiplexing technology on an end-to-end solution. With four fibre pairs, it offers a total design capacity of 40 Tb/s between Fortaleza and Luanda.