Why Cancun is a new submarine cable hotspot in Latin America
Mexican tourist city Cancun has become the darling of submarine telecoms cables in the Caribbean and Central America, with three new systems planned to go live by 2024.
The construction of these systems is being driven by a surge in connectivity demands, the need to better serve hotels and resorts installed in the Cancun area with reliable and faster internet, and to offer interconnection to other global cable routes and internet content based in the US.
The first of the new cables set to go live is GigNet-1, with the latest launch date for the project outlined for the fourth quarter of this year.
The system is owned by GigNet, a digital infrastructure company with an extensive regional fiber broadband network in the Riviera Maya region of Quintana Roo state which is focused mainly on serving hotels and resorts in the Cancun area.
This system will connect Cancun to Boca Raton in the US directly, with no branches initially planned.
A marine survey for the project was completed last May and the installation of the cable, which is due to begin in the coming months, was commissioned to I.T. International Telecom Inc and Xtera.
“Data consumption is growing faster than many ever imagined and it’s putting stress on old infrastructure that was not built to meet current demands. This is especially true in the Mexican Caribbean, which is underserved by incumbent providers,” GigNet says on its website.
The company claims that the Mexican Caribbean region has very limited broadband, with most download speeds at area resorts and hotels lower than 10Mbps. Also, 94% of travelers cite reliable Wi-Fi as the most important amenity at a resort or hotel.
AURORA
The second new cable in the making is Aurora.
Owned by FPT Submarine Networks (FPT), the cable will run 5,500km from West Florida to Manta in Ecuador, with landing points in Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, the Cayman Islands and Colombia, in addition to Cancun.
Construction was commissioned to Nokia's Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN). The project's total budget is US$310mn and FPT says that it is now expected to be ready for service in the fourth quarter of 2022 or early 2023.
“This new system, Aurora Cable, will support the expanding competitive environment in the region and provide increased scalability over current infrastructure for Big Data, IoT, 5G and other new applications, resulting in reduced capital expenditures and increased margins for clients,” FPT said.
Source: FPT
CARIBBEAN EXPRESS
The third new cable connecting the Mexican tourist resort in the next two years is Caribbean Express (CX), which will run from West Palm Beach in Florida to the Balboa district of Panama City, with links to Cancun and Cartagena in Colombia.
CX is owned by Atlanta-based submarine cable company Ocean Networks. According to the firm, CX will be carrier-neutral (open to any operator or customer) and have 18 pairs of fiber optics.
There are planned future links to Cuba (Havana), Grand Cayman (George Town), Guatemala (Puerto Barrios), Jamaica (Kingston), Honduras (Puerto Lempira), Nicaragua (Bluefields) and Costa Rica (Limón).
According to Ocean Networks' latest update on the project, the system is now expected be ready for service in the second quarter of 2024. The company is already selling bandwidth capacity to interested players.
Source: Ocean Networks
CX is designed to meet demand from Central American markets with lower latency connectivity to the network access point (NAP) of the Americas and located in Miami and Jacksonville (Florida).
Opened in 2001, the hurricane-proof NAP of the Americas, or MI1, is a massive datacenter operated by Equinix and considered to be the primary network exchange point between the US and Latin America.
Telmex opened a datacenter in Cancun last July to connect to the NAP of the Americas and to take advantage of international submarine cables that arrive and will arrive in the city.
Equinix is currently the leading company receiving submarine cables in datacenters and internet business exchange structures in Latin America.
The company says it has already been selected as an interconnection partner in about 40 submarine cable projects globally.
Among the most recent submarine cables connecting Latin America anchoring at Equinix's sites are Ellalink, which connects Brazil to Europe; Malbec, owned by GlobeNet, which connects Brazil to Argentina; SACS, from Angola Cables, linking Brazil to Africa; Seabras-1, owned by Seaborn, connecting Brazil to the US; and Google’s Curie, connecting Chile to the US.
CURRENT CABLES
At present, Cancun hosts three submarine systems, the oldest of them being the Maya-1 cable, owned by a consortium of international carriers with operations in Latin America and activated in 2000.
Maya-1 links Florida to Tolu in Colombia, with landing points in the Cayman Islands, Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama, in addition to Cancun.
The second cable is Arcos, a system launched in 2001 connecting a host of Central American nations and Caribbean islands to Florida. Like Maya-1, Arcos is owned by a consortium of telcos with operations in these markets.
The third is América Móvil’s AMX-1, which went live in 2014 and connects the US, Central America, Caribbean and South America across 17,800km.
With six cables connected, Cancun will therefore join other major regional cable hubs, such as Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Las Toninas in Argentina, and Cartagena in Colombia.
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