By GBTIMES Beijing
June 28, 2017
Huawei Marine Networks and China Unicom on Tuesday signed an agreement with Cameroon Telecommunications to build the South Atlantic Inter Link (SAIL).
According to the contract with Cameroon's national telecommunications and Internet service provider Camtel, China Unicom will be responsible for the construction and maintenance of the 6,000-kilometre-long submarine cable system.
Huawei Marine Networks, a subsidiary of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, will will provide systematic solutions.
SAIL will link Kribi of Cameroon and Fortaleza of Brazil across the south Atlantic sea, and will be the first direct access cable that connects Africa and South America.
Using Huawei Submarine’s 100G technology, SAIL will have an initial system capacity of 32 Tbit per second.
“When it is completed, it will provide new international connectivity to facilitate bandwidth demand between Africa and South America and support the booming economies in the two continents,” said Camtel General Manager David Nkote.
According to a report by Belgium-based news website Camer.be, the cost of SAIL will reach US$136 million, of which US$85 million was funded by the Export-Import Bank of China, with the remainder covered by Camtel. China Unicom also provided Camtel with funds of US$34 million.
