The West African Cable System (WACS) has finally arrived in South Africa, landing earlier today at Yzerfontein, near Cape Town.

The new undersea submarine cable system is set to double SA's broadband capacity, and is Africa's largest capacity undersea cable yet, with a higher capacity than the Seacom, Eassy and SAT-3 cable systems combined.

Spanning 14 000 kilometres, the cable will bring an additional 5.12 terrabits per second of connectivity to our shores, boosting our broadband capacity by more than 500 gigabits per second.

The $650 million project will link Southern Africa with Europe, finding landing points in SA, Namibia, Angola, Congo, Cameroon, Nigeria, Togo, Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Cape Verde, the Canary Islands, Portugal and finally the UK, ITWeb reports.

The cable was landed at Yzerfontein to create a third international fibre gateway into the country, the other two being located at Melkbosstrand and Mtunzini.

Telkom was given the responsibility of landing the cable in SA, with executive for global capacity, Johan Meyer saying, “The third gateway is quite critical, the other two gateways have three cables each that are in very close proximity to each other. The risk is that if a ship drags its anchor, it can cut through all three so if one gateway is affected, at least now there are two others. WACS is even more critical, because it has bigger capacity than all the others.”

This reduces the risk of South Africa suffering a nationwide internet blackout if an accident or natural disaster takes place.

The new fibre optic cable makes use of dense wavelength division multiplexing technology to enable bidirectional communication to take place over a single strand of fibre.

The cable will take care of SA's internet demands well into the first quarter of the 21st century, Meyer explained, and will enable South Africans from all sectors to enjoy faster broadband access. The cable should be ready for commercial service in the first quarter of 2012.