Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 26 | Page 7

NEWS Vox introduces high-speed satellite Internet plans to South Africa YahClick, has announced new service plans to give customers better speeds and more data options. making the switch, customers can also go online to the Vox website to compare and subscribe to satellite connectivity plans. “Apart from offering new users competitively priced products, this is of huge benefit to our existing customers,” said Jacques Visser, Head of Wireless at Vox. The monthly service plans come with data allocations ranging from 5GB to 400GB, and for the first time introduces an uncapped option. “There has been a significant improvement in speed from between 1 and 7Mbps to 16Mbps, a broader range of service plans are now available, and users get to retain their voice channels. Jacques Visser, Head of Wireless at Vox T o keep pace with evolving requirements in South Africa, integrated ICT and infrastructure provider Vox, which offers broadband satellite internet through “This is the first phase to improve the throughput speeds of our YahClick satellite services. The second phase will offer throughput speeds of up to 25Mbps.” While Vox will be progressively contacting customers to inform them of the new options available, and assisting them with ///////////////// West Africa Cable System Upgrade II is completed H uawei Marine has completed the West Africa Cable System (WACS) Upgrade II. The project was signed a year ago before being put into commercial use last October. The upgrade realised 32*100G wavelengths configured on the longest optically amplified single fibre span stretching 11,500km from South Africa to Portugal. Upgrade II through the use of Flex Grid and Optical pass-through technologies to meet the high-capacity demands. Optical pass-through transmission optimises the performance limit and minimises the system cost. Demonstrating multi-country end-to- end delivery capabilities, Huawei Marine has set an industry benchmark for the world’s longest 100G system by successfully completing this upgrade. Ma Yanfeng, Vice President of Huawei Marine said: “The WACS Consortium selected Huawei Marine to expand the system’s capacity and looking once again to Huawei Marine verified our product solution capabilities, quality, and process improvement capabilities. We will continue to accumulate experience from the project and strive to improve connections between Africa and the world.” As the longest 100G submarine cable system in Africa, WACS has two network operation centres and 15 landing points in 14 countries spanning West Africa and Europe. At the contract signing ceremony, the WACS consortium recognised Huawei’s achievements in delivering WACS Upgrade I and looked forward to the successful delivery of WACS Upgrade II. New technologies and high integration design concepts were adopted in WACS www.intelligentcio.com INTELLIGENTCIO 7