WACS Upgrade II Equips 32*100G Waves with Huawei Marine Solutions

According to Huawei Marine, the second stage of upgrade on the WACS (West African Cable System) submarine cable system (WACS Upgrade II) was completed in Feb., 2019. The WACS Upgrade II realized 32*100G wavelengths configured on the longest optically amplified single fiber span stretching 11500km from South Africa to Portugal.

The WACS consists of four fibre pairs, linking South of Africa and Europe, spanning 14530km from Yzerfontein cable landing station in Cape Town of South Africa to WACS PoP at Global Switch London in the United Kingdom, with 15 terminal stations forming a consortium of 18 leading international telecom carriers.

WACS cable system was initially designed with 128 wavelengths per fiber pair, running at 10 Gbps per wavelength, and design capacity of 5.12 Tbps. The initial investment of WACS is about US$650million and supplied by ASN. 

The cable laying operation of WACS was started in July 2010 by ASN. WACS was put into operation in May 2012.

In Decmber 2015, Huawei Marine completed the first upgrade of WACS (WACS Upgrade I),  using 100Gbps technology, increasing the WACS system design capacity to 14.5Tbit/s.