INTELLIGENT CABLING
Vox enhances its core
network with Angola Cables
ntegrated ICT and infrastructure
provider, Vox has announced that
it has entered into a partnership
with Angola Cables that will give it remote
peering access to the undersea South
Atlantic Cable System (SACS) that links
Africa with the Americas.
“Vox currently makes use of three
cable systems to provide international
connectivity between South Africa and
London in the UK – the South Atlantic 3
(SAT3), the West Africa Cable System (WACS)
and the Eastern Africa Submarine Cable
System (EASSy) adding capacity through this
fourth cable will significantly enhance our
core network,” said Christopher Burrell, Head
of Network at Vox.
SACS is the first undersea cable
connection to provide a direct link between
Africa and South America. The 6165km-long
cable with a design capacity of 40Tbps
connects Luanda, Angola with Fortaleza,
Brazil and provides the lowest latency routing
option between the two continents. In South
Africa, Angola Cables has Points of Presence
(PoPs) in both Cape Town and Johannesburg.
“In addition, SACS offers connections
to other cable systems such as WACS, and
MONET, which links Brazil with the United
States helping to reduce latency between
Africa and North America by up to 60%
when compared to existing routing options
via Europe,” added Burrell.
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“As an example, latency between Cape
Town and New York drops from 236ms via
existing connections to 190ms using SACS and
Monet, while latency between Cape Town and
São Paulo is reduced from 395ms to 140ms.”
Selective peering
Burrell says that unlike the first three cables
that allow for a range of data traffic to
be carried between South Africa and the
points of presence in London, the SACS
arrangement will cater for selective peering
options. The link will be used to transfer
certain types of content initially and will
extend their peering relationships over time.
“Based on demand, Vox will approach
content delivery networks (CDNs) in Luanda,
Sao Paulo and New York, to look at what can
be delivered to South African consumers and
businesses at a lower latency, and in doing so,
shorten the distance between local users and
content in international markets,” he said.
Vox already has peering arrangements in
place with large CDNs and Cloud Providers
through its existing Internet Exchange (IX)
relationships in South Africa.
Given the new arrangement with Angola
Cables, Vox will be able to extend their reach
and offer customers the ability to host multi-
cloud services abroad – and pass on the
benefits of the lower latencies via SACS.
Angola Cables’ Chief Executive Officer,
António Nunes maintains that SACS
Christopher Burrell,
Head of Network at Vox
presents a multitude of benefits for users
on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from
the considerable reductions in latencies, the
cable network has the capacity to cater for
the huge rise in demand for data services.
“Given that SACS also has multiple
onward connection options, companies and
individuals can send, share or transmit data
quickly and efficiently, something which has
become a vital commodity in today’s digital
economy,” said Nunes.
“Customers who stand to benefit from
the new arrangement with Vox include the
increasing number of enterprises looking to
utilise technologies such as Software-Defined
Wide Area Networking (SD-WAN), Over the
Top (OTT) and VPN service providers.
“Not only will businesses benefit but so
too will individual users and avid gamers
who frequently access international
gaming platforms. SACS is a game-changer
and offers our customers a connection to
the world.”
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