France Telecom and 19 partners will invest $700 million (approx. Ôé¼585 million) in bringing high-speed internet to 20 countries in western Africa, it has been announced.
The Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) fibre-optic cable will stretch for 17,000 kilometres underwater from Penmarch in France to Cape Town in South Africa, and is expected to be completed in 2012.
It will connect 23 countries en route, including Spain and Portugal and countries along AfricaÔÇÖs west coast including Mauritania, Gabon and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mali and Niger, which are landlocked, will be connected by an overland cable.
The cable will be the first ever optical broadband link for Liberia, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe, Equatorial Guinea and Mauritania. In Senegal, Cote dÔÇÖIvoire and Cameroon, it will complement another France Telecom cable.
For much of the route, the cable will lie at a depth of two to three kilometres, but some sections of the cable will lie at a depth of five kilometres.
The ACE system will deploy wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) technology, which is currently the most advanced available for submarine cables. With WDM, cable capacity can then be increased without additional submarine work.
According to the agreement, France Telecom will contribute $250 million (Ôé¼208 million) of the total cost of the project. Alcatel-Lucent, also based in Paris, has won the supply contract for the project, a deal worth more than $500 million (Ôé¼417 million).
Yves Ruggeri, chairman of the consortiumÔÇÖs management committee, said: ÔÇ£ACE is further proof of the need for faster and more cost-effective capacity and alternative route to provide everyone with broadband access, so crucial to social and economic development.
ÔÇ£Alcatel-Lucent combines field-proven experience, reliability and the customer focus we need for such a crucial project that will set a new milestone in the development of the African communication infrastructure.ÔÇØ
Philippe Dumont, head of Alcatel-LucentÔÇÖs submarine network activity, added: ÔÇ£ACE is set to advance the African communication infrastructure with new connectivity to expand the adoption of basic and advanced broadband services at affordable rates.
ÔÇ£This new contract further confirms our commitment to put our newest 40Gbit/s technology at the service of information enablement to ensure that broadband access is economically spread throughout the continent, while improving service reach and stability.ÔÇØ
Alcatel also said that with an ultimate design capacity of 5.12 terabits per second, the cable has built-in capacity of 40 gigabits per second, providing the broadband infrastructure that will address present and future needs for connectivity and capacity.
France Telecom has been looking to Africa and the Middle East recently for revenue as growth slows in its core European markets. The company indicated in April that it could spend as much as Ôé¼7 billion on deals in those regions as part of its strategy to double its revenue from emerging markets.
Despite being the fastest-growing telecoms market in the world, Africa's broadband growth has been hampered thus far by costly international bandwidth and poor infrastructure, which has impeded development and deterred investors.
