Connecting Brazil to Cameroon in Its First Ever Intercontinental Fiber Optic Project (SAIL)

• Nexans has reached a major milestone with the successful completion of a 6,000 km link across the South Atlantic Ocean based on its second-generation repeatered submarine fiber optic cables.

• The new link will help meet the growing demand for high speed broadband in Africa and South America.

Latency, the tiny time delay when a data stream has to travel thousands of kilometers between computers on different continents, is regarded as the enemy of the digital economy. Even a delay of only a few milliseconds can make the difference between profit and loss for businesses dealing with financial transactions. To provide Africa and South America with a faster and more stable Internet connection, Nexans manufactured and successfully tested 6,000 km of submarine fiber optic cables for the South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL) project connecting Cameroon to Brazil.

Enabling digital economy in Africa and South America

As a phase II of Cameroon’s National Broadband Network development (‘NBNII’), the SAIL project will link Cameroon to Brazil. Nexans has played a critical role in the project by manufacturing the fiber optic cables for the 6,000 km link based on its second-generation unrepeatered technology. The link comprises four fiber pairs, each with a bandwidth of 100 Gbit/s.

Earlier this year, customer representatives from Huawei Marine Networks and the end customer Camtel and China Unicom were present when the final System Acceptance Test (SAT) for Phase 2 was successfully accomplished at Nexans facilities in Rognan, Norway.

The SAIL project builds on Nexans’ collaboration with Huawei Marine Networks in the framework of Phase I, the Nigeria-Cameroon Cable System, which was delivered to Camtel and China Unicom  back in 2015. The successful delivery of Nexans’ first transatlantic cable crowns a decade of close partnership between Huawei Marine Networks and Nexans.

The submarine fiber optic cables were manufactured and tested by Nexans Norway at its facility in Rognan, Norway.

The submarine fiber optic cable link between Brazil and Cameroon will be operational at the end of the third quarter of 2018.