State-owned telecom firm iAngola Cables is set to lay a $260 million-worth undersea fibre-optic cable linking Angola and Brazil in an effort to provide high-speed data connections between the two countries.

The optic fibre cable will be 6,000 kilometres long and will link Luanda (Angola) to Fortaleza (Brazil). It is expected to be operational in 2015 and will have a data transmission capacity of 40 Tbps (terabits per second).

“The bank guarantee, from two Angolan banks, was granted to state-owned company iAngola Cables, and is intended to lay an undersea
telecommunications cable between Angola and Brazil, called the South Atlantic Cable System, and another between Brazil and the United States, called the Americas Cable,” reads a statement from the Angolan President’s Office.

An optical fibre cable is a cable containing one or more  optical fibers that are used to carry light. The optical fibre elements are typically individually coated with plastic layers and contained in a protective tube suitable for the environment where the cable will be
deployed.

Since the end of the Angolan Civil War in 2002 that ravaged the country from its start in 1975, access to information and communication technologies (ICTs) has improved dramatically. In 2001, the Angola government began adopting regulations to liberalize the telecom industry, which enabled private investments to revitalize the country’s ICT infrastructure that had been severely damaged by the decades-long conflict. Today, Angola has one of the largest mobile telecom markets in sub-Saharan Africa and internet access is growing steadily.

By George Mpofu