Angola Cables and its partner Nokia, the telecoms equipment manufacturer, announced they have successfully linked Africa to North America by optical fiber. The information was unveiled at the AfricaCom Summit, held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 12 to 14 November 2019.

The two companies reported that the link was made between the cities of Sangano in Angola and Boca Raton in Florida (USA) by connecting the MONET and SACS (South Atlantic Cable System) systems, and is now available for commercial use.

The 6,165 km long SACS cable, consisting of 4 pairs of fibers with a total capacity of 40 Tbit, connects Luanda in Angola to Fortaleza in Brazil. It belongs to Angola Cables and is considered the first low-latency routing system between Africa and South America.

The MONET cable, 10,556 km long and composed of six pairs of fibers for an initial capacity of 64 Tbit, connects the cities of Santos and Fortaleza in Brazil to Boca Raton in the United States. It is operated by four telecommunications companies which are Algar Telecom, Angola Cables, ANTEL and Google.

According to Ângelo Gama, chief technical officer of Angola Cables, “by optically interconnecting the deployed MONET and South Atlantic Cable System (SACS), Angola Cables is able to further reduce latency between content providers in North America and the rapidly growing data consumption markets in Africa.”