The newly appointed CEO at eFive Telecoms confirmed that the financial discussions for the 10,000-kilometre South Atlantic Express (SAex) cable are in advanced stages. The cable will connect South Africa with Brazil, and is said to cost around R3 billion.
“I am pleased to advise that the vendor selection process is close to being finalised and finance discussions are well advanced,” Rosalind Thomas, CEO of eFive Telecoms told BusinessTech. The time-frame for the completion is before June 2013, commented Lawrence Mulaudzi, the MD of eFive in April last year.
“The group said that the Bank of China announced that it was interested in investing 60% of the funds required for the project. The Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa has also expressed interest in funding. SAex is a proposed submarine communications cable linking South Africa and Angola to Brazil with onward connectivity to the United States that will connect to the existing GlobeNet cable system,” BusinessTech wrote.
When the cable is completed, it will have a capacity of 12.8 TBit/s and will consist of four fibre pairs, each capable of carrying 3,2TBit/s of data using 40GBit/s wavelength technology. Another two pairs will be extended into South Africa, while another pair is likely to go to Angola.
Charlie Fripp – Acting Online editor
