Argentine province to complete 1,800km fiber network this year

Argentina's Corrientes province aims to complete a fiber optics ring this year, following an agreement between provincial company TelCo and state-owned Arsat.

Under the agreement, Corrientes will use Arsat's network to connect southern localities to guarantee province-wide coverage by year-end.  

"The plan is to complete the entire network this year. The southern sections are still pending, where we have two new rings planned: one along the Uruguay river coast and another along the Paraná river coast, with the goal of completing them this year," TelCo chairman Manuel Valdés said in a press release. 

The entire project covers 1,800km.

TelCo and Arsat have already an agreement. The latest also covers the reciprocal use of telecoms infrastructure.

Arsat will receive 270km of TelCo's network, covering Paso de los Libres-Alvear, Alvear-Santo Tomé, Santo Tomé-Gobernador Virasoro and Gobernador Virasoro-national route 14/national route 120.

In turn, TelCo will receive the sections connecting national route 12-Goya-Pueblo Libertador access and Paso de los Libres-Monte Caserosm, covering a total of 231km, plus a 5km section of provincial route 27-Cruz de los Milagros. 

TelCo will also connect Mocoretá and route 5 this year.

To date, 32 municipalities, 1,500 schools, 85 hospitals and health centers, 100 police stations and 33 internet service providers have been connected to TelCo's service.

Datacenter

TelCo also plans to launch a datacenter to host the provincial cloud. 

"We've already purchased nine large servers, of which six have already arrived, and three more are coming as reinforcements. And they provide about 420 processing cores," Valdes said.

The company did not provide details about investments or a timeline for this project.