INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cabling
Nokia and Angola Cables trial
first direct optical connection
between USA and Africa
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time 300 Gbps of traffic between Miami and
Luanda. Lower-latency network connections
improve performance and user experience
in applications such as cloud computing and
content consumption. According to the ITU,
Sub-Saharan Africa has recorded the highest
growth in Internet use globally over the past
decade, from under 10% of the population
in 2010, to over 28% in 2019. Enhanced
subsea connectivity is crucial for access to
global content and services of this growing
user base.
The subsea wavelengths were deployed with
Nokia’s 1830 Photonic Service Interconnect
(PSI) data centre interconnect (DCI)
platform utilising the PSE-3.
A
ngola Cables is trialling Nokia’s
Photonic Service Engine 3 (PSE-3)
chipset for the first direct optical
connection between the USA and Africa.
The route provides direct, low-latency trans-
Atlantic routing and greatly simplifies the
turn-up of services to better serve rapidly
growing data consumption markets in Africa.
Subsea fibre-optic cables form the backbone
of the global Internet, connecting countries
and continents across vast trans-oceanic
distances. The new services leverage the
interconnection of two existing subsea
cable systems – SACS (South Atlantic
Cable System) and MONET. SACS, owned
and managed by Angola Cables, operates
between Fortaleza, Brazil and Luanda,
Angola and is connected to AngoNAP
www.intelligentcio.com
The 1830 PSI provisioned optical
wavelengths at 300 Gbps using probabilistic
constellation shaping (PCS) to optimally
shape the signals to the specific
characteristics of the 12,635 km cable,
achieve operation near the theoretical limits
of the system.
AFRICA IS A
STRATEGIC
GROWTH MARKET
FOR NOKIA ACROSS
BOTH OUR CORE
CSP AND WEB
SCALE BUSINESSES.
Datacenter. The consortium-owned MONET
connects Santos/Fortaleza with Florida/USA.
Combining SACS and MONET subsea
systems in this joint trial allows for the first
Fernando Azevedo, Technical Director at
Angola Cables, said: “With Nokia’s PSE-3,
Angola Cables can optically interconnect
the MONET and SACS submarine fibre
optic cables, enabling more capacity and
a further reduction in latency between
content providers in North America and
the rapidly growing data consumption
markets in Africa.”
Sam Bucci, Head of Optical Networking at
Nokia, added: “Africa is a strategic growth
market for Nokia across both our core CSP
and web scale businesses. We are proud
to partner with Angola Cables to apply
our ground-breaking PSE-3 technology to
a unique and challenging subsea route,
helping to deliver enhanced services to a
rapidly developing part of the world.” n
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