The CEO of Angola Cables, Antonio Nunes, has confirmed that construction of the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) linking Angola and Brazil will start early next year and be completed in around 18 months, meaning that the ready-for-service (RFS) date has been pushed back to mid-2015 from an earlier forecast of end-2014. Angola Cables’ Brazilian telco partner in the SACS project, Telebras, meanwhile separately confirmed that is resuming work on the ‘high priority’ project while sidelining a proposed new Brazil-US link for the time being (see CommsUpdate article today for more details).
Sierra Support Services, which is owned by Digicel boss Denis O’Brien’s Siteserv group, has been named as the preferred bidder for a USD15 million contract to design and build a high speed fibre network in Papua New Guinea; the cable will be strung above ground on electricity poles in an effort to combat problems posed by the mountainous terrain.
Huawei and Turk Telekom have announced the successful completion of a field trial of WDM optical transport system technology; the test delivered a total of 40Tbps on Turk Telekom’s live fibre-optic network. The partners conducted the trial over 307km of G.652 fibre between Ankara and Cankiri.
Datamena, the carrier-neutral data centre and connectivity platform based in the UAE and servicing the Middle East and Africa (MEA) region, has entered into a partnership with Djibouti Data Centre. Through the collaboration Datamena and Djibouti Data Centre will enhance customers’ accessibility by providing a seamless connectivity link between Dubai and Africa.
Malaysia-based managed service provider AIMS Group has announced a partnership with China Telecom which will see the Malaysian company reselling the latter’s premium IP routes and data centre capacity to local corporations seeking to expand into various Chinese cities.