The South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) is now on-stream and open for commercial traffic, according to Angola Cables.

In a statement the company explained that SACS has been manufactured and powered by NEC Corporation and "is one of the most advanced submarine telecommunications systems to go into commercial operation connecting Angola (Africa) and Brazil (South America)."

"Data transfer speeds will be greatly improved (five times faster than existing cable routings), reducing latency from Fortaleza (Brazil) to Luanda (Angola) from 350ms to 63ms. Luanda will also connect to London and Miami with approximately 128 milliseconds latency. These two major content hubs, will position Angola as a strategic point to serve the transatlantic region with low latency and resilient connections," reads the company's statement.

Angola Cables added that with the onward connections to the recently completed Monet Cable and the West Africa Cable System (WACS), SACS will also offer reduced latency between Miami (USA) and Cape Town (South Africa) from 338ms to 163ms.

"SACS offers a high quality of service and improved latency of up to 60% over current routing options. The cable will also contribute to reductions in data traffic costs between South America and Africa, offering savings to operators that in turn, could be passed onto end-users and customers," it stated.

António Nunes, CEO of Angola Cables said that the commercialisation of the cable is 'more than just a game-changer' when it comes to data connectivity and services between the two continents.

The new routing will dynamically change the internet traffic patterns within the Southern Hemisphere and combined with Monet & WACS, will dramatically alter global digital traffic routing options.

"Our ambition is to transport South American and Asian data packets via our African hub using SACS, and together with Monet and the WACS, provide a more efficient direct connectivity option between North, Central and South America onto Africa, Europe and Asia. By developing and connecting ecosystems that allows for local IP traffic to be exchanged locally and regionally, the efficiency of networks that are serving the Southern Hemisphere can be vastly improved," said Nunes.

Angola Cables believes SACS will provide African ISPs and users with a more direct, secure path to the Americas - without having to pass through Europe.

Content service providers in Latin America will also stand to benefit with the option of using the SACS route to reach markets in Africa and Europe without utilising the traditional and high volume, Northern Hemisphere internet traffic routings, the company added.

SACS has been designed with 100Gbps coherent WDM technology on an end-to-end solution.

With 4 fibre pairs, it offers a total design capacity of 40 Tbit/s between Fortaleza (Brazil) and Luanda (Angola).

According to Nunes, the Luanda-based Angola Cables has invested over US$300 million in its infrastructure.