What is "saex"

SAex (South Atlantic Express) is a proposed submarine communications cable linking South Africa to Brazil with branches to Namibia and Saint Helena.

The project was announced in 2011 by eFive Telecoms (Pty) Ltd, who led the project during the early feasibility studies. In November 2013 South Atlantic Express Cable Company (Pty) Ltd took over responsibility and was renamed to SimplCom South Africa (Pty) Ltd after SimplCom Inc. (Canada) acquired a controlling shareholding in the former. In April, 2011 the Bank of China announced that it was interested in investing 60% of the funds required for the project while the Industrial Development Corporation of South Africa also had expessed interest in providing funding.

As of May 2014 the project had funding interest from numerous private and public financial institutions.

In June 2011 the project was expected to cost R3 billion to complete. A revised configuration (cable branch to Namibia instead of Angola and additional branch to Saint Helena and four instead of three fibre pairs), technological improvements and lower costs of technology are expected to reduce the projected capacity prices of the original design.