With the go-live of the Wacs cable in May, South Africa is now served by five submarine cables – Wacs, SAT3, SAFE, Seacom and Eassy. SAFE connects to AsiaPac, via the Indian Ocean islands, SAT3 and Wacs connect the continent to Europe via its west coast, and Eassy and Seacom provide east coast links to the Middle East and Mediterranean.

After years of only having access to SAT3 and SAFE, South Africa is experiencing a veritable glut of international bandwidth, to the extent where some commentators have begun to ask if we don’t have too much capacity and too many cables.