The 29,000km system will connect Forteleza, the Canary Islands and Seixal with additional branches in Cape Verde, Madeira and Casablanca. In addition, the new system will also include a Network Operations Centre (NOC) as well as a brand new data centre in the Canary Islands from which additional routes from West Africa, the Mediterranean and North America are also expected.
“HCC is delighted to invest initially for the WASACE 1 system, opening a new era in the connection between Europe and Latin America. It will do so by offering low-latency communication services by providing a direct route between these continents without going through the US,” said Luis Jara, CEO of HCC.
Constructing the new system for HCC and joining the project, as the technological and strategic supplier for the system is NEC. The company will also act in the same capacity for the new routes planned and previously mentioned.
Once built, WASACE 1 will be the first system to deploy first-gen fibre-optic technology between Europe and Latin America, enabling it to multiply the capacity between of the previous older systems. It will have 8 fibre pairs with a total capacity of 144Tbps, each pair with an upgradable initial capacity of 18Tbps.
The project will take no more than 30 months to complete and has a projected completion and RFS date of Q2 2021.
A second submarine cable system WASACE 2 will also be deployed in the near future connecting the Canary Islands to South Africa and will be announced before mid-2019 for completion during the H2 2021.
“In addition, the establishment of the new data centre in the Canary Islands, together with the construction of the WASACE 2 cable, means, for HCC, a major milestone within the goal of becoming the main interconnection HUB facing and uniting Africa, Latin America, the Mediterranean region, Europe and the United States,” added Jara.