Neotel has won a contract to run the primary network operating centre, or NOC, for the West Africa Cable System (Wacs), the new, high-capacity submarine system running between Cape Town and London. Wacs is due to be ready for commercial service early next year.

The company’s CEO, Sunil Joshi, says it won the contract in the face of stiff competition from rival operators, including Telkom.

The NOC will be located at Neotel’s data centre in Johannesburg, which already hosts the Seacom system that runs along Africa’s east coast to India and Europe.

Wacs, which has a design capacity using current technology of 5,1Tbit/s, will be the first cable system stretching northward from SA to Europe since the Sat-3 system went live a decade ago. It’s expected that at least 500Gbit/s of capacity will be “lit” at switch-on in the first quarter of 2012.

Joshi says Neotel, which is controlled by India’s Tata Communications, is the only telecommunications operator in SA with access to all five submarine cable systems that connect SA with the rest of the world.

Neotel says it expects to create between eight and 10 jobs at its data centre in Johannesburg to manage the Wacs NOC.

The company is expected to provide an update on its financial performance and subscriber numbers on 3 November. It is investing about R500m in telecoms infrastructure in its current financial year, which ends in March. — Duncan McLeod, TechCentral