Angola Cables announced on Tuesday plans to upgrade two subsea cables that provide connectivity between Africa, Brazil, and the USA. Devices from the American network group Ciena will be used for this purpose. These works on the Monet and Sacs systems aim to increase capacity for companies involved in cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
The cost of the contract or the completion timeline was not disclosed. Angola Cables fully owns one of the cables, while the second cable is jointly owned. Together, they form a direct route from Africa to North America.
The South Atlantic Cable System (Sacs) is entirely owned by Angola Cables. It spans 6,165 km from Sangano on the Angolan coast to Fortaleza in northeastern Brazil and began operating in September 2018. This is the first transatlantic cable system crossing the Southern Hemisphere.
The Monet system, which is 10,556 km long, connects Boca Raton in Florida with Fortaleza and Praia Grande, located near Santos in the state of São Paulo. Angola Cables co-owns it with Google, Brazilian Algar Telecom, and Uruguayan Antel; it has been operational since late 2017.
Both cables converge in Fortaleza. According to company statements, together they transmit data from Angola to the USA and back in approximately 130 milliseconds. New cables will not be laid.
Upgrading Existing Infrastructure
Instead of laying new lines, Ciena equipment, including Waveserver hardware utilizing WaveLogic 6 Extreme optical technology, will be installed at the ends of existing fiber-optic lines. This will allow the same submarine fiber optic cable to transmit a larger volume of data.
The most significant changes will affect the Monet system, which will begin supporting client connections with a capacity of 800 Gbps. The companies also reported that the upgrade will increase the flexibility of capacity for both cables, although the 800 Gbps connection capability applies exclusively to Monet. Ciena specified that customers can purchase connections ranging from a single 100 Gbps channel up to a full pair of fibers.
Angola Cables CTO, Adriano Caldevilleira, stated in a declaration: 'Our subsea cable systems are a critical digital bridge connecting Africa to the Americas, offering a diverse and secure route between these continents, while demand from hyperscalers and cloud providers continues to grow.'
Ciena Regional Director Fernando Capella noted: 'The demand for AI, cloud services, and digital applications accelerates the need for smarter and higher-performance networks.'
The collaboration began back in 2017 when Angola Cables selected Ciena as the technology provider for Monet. In 2021, Angola Cables added 2.2 Tbps of capacity to the Monet segments connecting Miami, Fortaleza, and São Paulo, using Ciena's WaveLogic Ai technology.
Angola Cables is also the host for the West Africa Cable System (Wacs), which lands in Izertonteyne on the west coast of South Africa. This provides traffic from South Africa a route to America via Angola and Brazil, bypassing Europe. This traffic crosses the Atlantic via Sacs, so it benefits from the additional, more flexible capacity, rather than the 800 Gbps channels limited to Monet, which connects Brazil and the USA.
When Sacs launched, TechCentral reported Angola Cables' forecast that this route would reduce latency between Cape Town and Miami from 338 ms to 163 ms. This route has already proven its value during a crisis: in March 2024, outages off the coast of Côte d'Ivoire disabled Wacs and other western cable lines, disrupting internet connectivity across South Africa. The outages were linked to a suspected underwater seismic event, and TechCentral later reported that most traffic was quickly rerouted through other cables, including Google's Equiano and Sacs.
