Dimension Data subsidiary Internet Solutions (IS) has boosted its ability to deliver capacity on the West Africa Cable System (WACS), following the launch of a fibre-optic cable ring between the WACS landing station and the IS Cape Town Internet Data Centre (IDC) facility.
According to IS CTO Prenesh Padayachee, the company has completed the rollout of a 100Gbps dual-route cable system and the rollout between the WACS landing station located in Yzerfontein, north of Cape Town and the IS IDC. “This protected cable system improves the delivery of the capacity IS has secured on WACS, and allows us to seamlessly upgrade capacity to the cable system as required.”
IS notes it has secured more capacity on WACS than it has on the SAT-3 cable - which makes WACS the company's primary link on the west coast. “WACS utilises newer technology than SAT-3, which is why we have chosen to make it a more integral part of our resilient international network. WACS also provides an additional failover to support the capacity we have on the various other undersea cable systems,” says Padayachee.
Through WACS, says Padayachee, IS aims to enable greater international communication, collaboration and e-commerce capabilities for its local clients, as well as to provide “high-speed, high-capacity connectivity” to its data centre network for the West African market, which he says is on the rise.
“Our ability to provision these capabilities is made significantly easier following the completion of the direct fibre ring system between the WACS landing station and the IS Cape Town IDC.”
Network value
“We have a total capacity on this fibre ring system of 4Tbps, which we can light up with minor equipment changes. This means that with just 100Gbps currently live, we have significant room for growth. This allows us to rapidly scale bandwidth upwards to meet growing demand without having to rely on a third party.”
He says IS can now offer seamless failover to two west coast cable systems, where the one terrestrial portion - at an optical layer - is under the full control of IS as opposed to an independent third party.
“This enables IS to rapidly resolve any issues and ensures greater accountability on our part. The system is also designed to better support all of the current and future needs of our clients, especially as more begin to make use of bandwidth-intensive hosted applications or communicate using media-rich video content or collaboration tools.”
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