Carriers Map in Latin America 2023 - Credit: © 2023 Convergencialatina
The Latin American Carriers market, both terrestrial and subsea, is in full reaction to the boom in data centers in the region. On one hand, there are subsea cables that have seen a revaluation due to the fact that they are complemented by networks of interconnected data centers. On the other hand, more robust integrations of terrestrial and subsea networks are generated, to meet the inter-cloud connectivity needs demanded by clients, focused on multi-cloud environments, with their workloads distributed between private and public clouds, and on-premise.
Data center connectivity is expected to be the main market to serve in the next five years. Cirion has more than 95 connected data centers in Latin America and another ten will be added. In parallel, it plans to install two new data centers, in Peru and Chile, of 20 Mega Watts, with which it seeks to face a next wave of investments from hyperscale players, no longer concentrated on their own infrastructure but also from third parties.
Regarding hyperscalers and their outlook for the coming years, Oracle reports that 70% of its revenue in Latin America comes from Cloud services, with almost 8,000 clients, and will add three cloud regions in the coming months (it already has 4 in Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Brazil). Its forecast is that in 2025, 90% of its revenue in the region will come from Cloud.
To sustain these trends, Liberty Networks plans to invest US$250 million in Latin America over the next 5 years to expand and improve its terrestrial and subsea reach, while increasing the capacity of its security and cloud offerings. In March 2023, Angola Cables launched its new company for Latin America “TelCables Brasil”, which will operate the infrastructure of the African company through AngoNAP Fortaleza, the Tier III Data Center located in Ceará and the Monet, SACS and WACS subsea cables. At the end of 2023, the Arimao cable, developed by Cuban state company Etecsa and French one Orange, is expected to enter service: it will link Cuba with the island of Martinique, and from there it will be interconnected with Kanawa subsea cable, complementing in turn to Alba-1.
Among other cases of land-submarine integration, during the first half of the year progress was made with the land section of the Gold Data 1 project, between Querétaro and Mexico City, which is complemented by a planned subsea section between Mexico and Florida, in the United States. At the same time, another land section is planned, between Mexico City and Veracruz. The Gold Data 1 initiative represents a total investment of US$ 150 million and seeks to add diversity to the South Florida connectivity market, in addition to ensuring data traffic to and from the North American East Coast.
On the other hand, Millicom deployed two new land routes across the border of Bolivia and Paraguay, directly connecting these countries for the first time. This is a 1,000 km redundant fiber installation, with scalable capabilities. This new section is part of a direct connection between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, in what is called the Bioceanic Corridor, a digital road project between Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Chile that covers more than 3,700 km.
The most recent projects announced for the subsea cable segment coincide in the need for shorter cables, which allow branching units to be triggered at the request of demand. This is the case of Deep Blue One, from Digicel, in the Caribbean, which is planned with ramifications for the connection of offshore oil and gas platforms; and Tikal, from Telxius and América Móvil, which will link Guatemala and USA.