Equiano Outage Performance Versus WACS & ACE
Equiano Outage Performance Versus WACS & ACE Cables
WACS has a lower latency than Equiano between Lagos and Lisbon, but you are going to pay a high price in outage time if history proves a good guide. The ACE record is significantly better than WACS, but both systems are light years behind Equiano. For reliability Equiano wins hands down. In fact, if you can only afford one cable and Equiano has your desired route, Equiano is the way to go. See the three cable's outage performance below.
Equiano: RFS February, 2023.
Wet system cumulative outage hours: 0.
Dry System: Under 48 hours.
WACS RFS: May 2012.
Wet system cumulative outage hours: 4,903.
Dry system outages: 140.
Downtime/System Operational Life Span: 4%.
ACE RFS: December 2012.
Wet system cumulative outage hours: 2,472.
Dry system outages: 70.
Downtime/System Operational Life Span: 2%.
What adds salt to the wound is that force majeure protected the capacity owners from any obligation to compensate their customers even though the consortiums clearly failed to properly design and build these cables. In particular, a huge chunk of the down time was due to WACS and ACE outages involving damage in West Africa's two notorious subterranean canyons, the Congo Canyon and Le Trou Sans Fond off Abidjan. In contrast, Equiano was routed around these geological hot spots. Vandals have even stolen ACE backhaul fiber in Abidjan, which suggests it is either not buried properly or on poles.
An observer might try to argue that Equiano has just been lucky so far since its outage history is much shorter than either ACE or WACS. What undermines this argument is the fact that the ACE and WACS outages are concentrated in the subterranean canyons. The ACE and WACS consortiums simply disregarded the canyon's well known dangers to save money and reduce latency. The lucky Equiano argument also ignores the fact that the Equiano is buried deeper. So the likely explanation of the outage gap is not Equiano's short history, but the incompetence of those senior managers that made the final design decisions. My bet is that the network planners were overruled by higher ups in senior managment. In telecom mediocrity often rises to the top.
WACS has a lower latency than Equiano between Lagos and Lisbon, but you are going to pay a high price in outage time if history proves a good guide. The ACE record is significantly better than WACS, but both systems are light years behind Equiano. For reliability Equiano wins hands down. In fact, if you can only afford one cable and Equiano has your desired route, Equiano is the way to go. See the three cable's outage performance below.
Equiano: RFS February, 2023.
Wet system cumulative outage hours: 0.
Dry System: Under 48 hours.
WACS RFS: May 2012.
Wet system cumulative outage hours: 4,903.
Dry system outages: 140.
Downtime/System Operational Life Span: 4%.
ACE RFS: December 2012.
Wet system cumulative outage hours: 2,472.
Dry system outages: 70.
Downtime/System Operational Life Span: 2%.
What adds salt to the wound is that force majeure protected the capacity owners from any obligation to compensate their customers even though the consortiums clearly failed to properly design and build these cables. In particular, a huge chunk of the down time was due to WACS and ACE outages involving damage in West Africa's two notorious subterranean canyons, the Congo Canyon and Le Trou Sans Fond off Abidjan. In contrast, Equiano was routed around these geological hot spots. Vandals have even stolen ACE backhaul fiber in Abidjan, which suggests it is either not buried properly or on poles.
An observer might try to argue that Equiano has just been lucky so far since its outage history is much shorter than either ACE or WACS. What undermines this argument is the fact that the ACE and WACS outages are concentrated in the subterranean canyons. The ACE and WACS consortiums simply disregarded the canyon's well known dangers to save money and reduce latency. The lucky Equiano argument also ignores the fact that the Equiano is buried deeper. So the likely explanation of the outage gap is not Equiano's short history, but the incompetence of those senior managers that made the final design decisions. My bet is that the network planners were overruled by higher ups in senior managment. In telecom mediocrity often rises to the top.
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