Convergencia Research, Consultoría especializada en Latinoamérica y Caribe
Monday, October 02, 2017

Carriers' Map 2017

New submarine cables and technological innovation in Latin America

Carriers' Map 2017 - Credit: © 2017 Convergencialatina
Carriers' Map 2017 - Credit: © 2017 Convergencialatina

Year 2017 will close with three concrete projects of the multiples in Latin American portfolio - the Monet, the Seabras-1 and the Junior -, while 2018 is expected to bring major innovations - the BRUSA and the South Atlantic Cable System (SACS) -, among others of smaller extension. The industry is experiencing a moment of reactivation, not only for the new deployments, but also for the technological innovations that increase the transmission capacity and the incorporation of artificial and analytical intelligence to take better advantage of the infrastructure and to respond to the peaks of demand.

Seabras-1 was inaugurated this year to connect San Pablo to New York, with a maximum capacity of 60 Tbps, and the expectation in the near future is placed on the systems that it will add, to a lesser extent, to connect new latitudes of the region. Its managers - the company Seaborn Networks - have already announced the ARBR, with an investment of US$ 70 million in conjunction with Grupo Werthein, from Praia Grande (where Seabras-1 lands) to Las Toninas in Argentina, by the end of 2018; and they already plan to extend it to Cape Town, in South Africa.

The Brazilian-US route will also be renewed this year with the Monet, an initiative by Google, Antel, Angola Cables and Algar Telecom that will later connect to Tannat, to reach Uruguay, and SACS, to cross the Atlantic to Luanda, on the African coast. Google will consolidate even more in Brazil by joining the 390-kilometer Junior, which will link Praia da Macumba in Rio de Janeiro and Praia Grande in São Paulo's Baixada Santista, deployed by Padtec.

Among the systems planned for 2018 are BRUSA, owned by Telxius, with 11,000 kilometers, between Rio de Janeiro, Fortaleza, Puerto Rico and Virginia in the United States; SACS by Angola Cables, which aims to generate "the shortest route between Africa, Latin America and the United States"; and across the northern hemisphere, the MAREA, by Facebook and Microsoft, which fits into the trend of content providers and new players in the segment (Internet Content Providers are already responsible for 50% of the traffic in the section that crosses the Atlantic ocean and by 2019 are expected to exceed half globally).

The industry finally waits for definitions of two other ambitious projects: the system that seeks to unite Chile with China, promoted by the government of the Latin American country and Huawei, is in a pre-feasibility studies stage, with a cost estimate of US$ 650 million; and Deep Blue Cable, that aims to reduce the cost of capacity in the Caribbean, with 12,000 kilometers and scheduled start date for 2019.

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