The SAFE (Southern Africa –Far East- West Africa Submarine cable)
This work was compiled by Saweda Liverpool and Cliff Missen
The SAFE (Southern Africa –Far East- West Africa Submarine cable) also known as SAT3/WASC/SAFE, is a telecommunications network designed to link by a fiber-optic cable Europe to South East Asia passing through Spain, Portugal, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola, South Africa, Mauritius, Reunion, India and Malaysia. The project involves the laying of an undersea optical cable linking all regions concerned. The cable will offer alternative route from east to west and vice versa and with a total of 17 landing points in 15 countries. The SAFE (Southern Africa –Far East- West Africa Submarine cable) also known as SAT3/WASC/SAFE, is a telecommunications network designed to link by a fiber-optic cable Europe to South East Asia passing through Spain, Portugal, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Angola, South Africa, Mauritius, Reunion, India and Malaysia. The project involves the laying of an undersea optical cable linking all regions concerned. The cable will offer alternative route from east to west and vice versa and with a total of 17 landing points in 15 countries.
The SAFE project was initiated in the early nineties with the objective of linking South Africa to Asia via the Indian Ocean Countries. The first operators to become interested in the project were Telekom SA of South Africa and Telekom Malaysia. A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed to that effect in June 1996. In September 1996 Mauritius Telecom became a party to the MoU followed later by France Telecom and VSNL from India.
At the same time (1997) Telkom Sa, Sonatel of Senegal, Ghana Telecom and OPTG of Gabon signed an MOU on the implementation of the SAT3/WASC system for the installation of a high capacity fibre optic cable system linking their respective territories. Many other African and other global operators joined the project and to the benefit of all the parties , the promoters decided to merge the SAFE project with the WASC/SAT3 in order to cover the globe from East to West and extend the cable to western Europe. Today the project is known as the SAT3/WASC/SAFE and the total number of promoters of the project which will cost more than US$600 is 36.
The SAT3/ WASC/SAFE fibre optic cable from Europe to Malaysia via India will probably be about 28,000 km, the longest cable in the world, with an expandable capacity of 100 gigabytes.
The SAT-3/WASC/SAFE system results from the combination, in 1998, of two projects: SAT-3/WASC (South Africa Telecommunications - West African Submarine Cable) and SAFE (South Africa-Far East). It has 16 landing points in 15 countries from Portugal to Malaysia. From Portugal it runs along the western coast of Africa, serving ten African countries on the way to Cape Town. From there it continues to India and Malaysia, with landing points on Reunion Island and Mauritius. Construction began in December 1999 and was completed in December 2001.
The submarine system comprises two fiberoptic pairs with ultimate potential capacity of 130 Gbps for the SAFE segment and 120 Gbps for the SAT-3/WASC segment. This is the equivalent of six million simultaneous phone calls or downloading of 35 DVDs per second. This capacity will accommodate growing traffic from telephony, multimedia and Internet services while significantly reducing transmission times. Thanks to the massive bandwidth available, new broadband applications will be spawned in this countries, facilitating foreign trade.
The system contractors were Alcatel Submarine Networks for the SAT-3/WASC segment and TyCom Ltd. For the SAFE link. Cable laying was sourced to specialized cableship operators, including France Telecom Marine, which installed 3,000 kilometers. France Telecom Marine subsidiary Chamarel Marine Services has been responsible for system maintenance since June 2001 for the segment between the latitude of Dakar in the Atlantic Ocean and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. This service zone covers 20,000 kilometers, or 70 percent of the total cable length.
