Telefónica's Telxius to develop new submarine cable in the Caribbean

Telefónica’s Telxius infra and submarine cable unit will develop a new system connecting the Caribbean with the US.

Dubbed CELIA, acronym for Caribbean ELIte Alliance, the cable is projected to span 3,700km connecting Aruba, Martinique, Antigua, Puerto Rico and Boca Raton in Florida, the company said in a statement. 

The subsea system is projected to go live in 3Q27.

Construction was commissioned to Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), which was acquired from Nokia by the French government this year and is the supplier of most of Telxius' cables.

The contract includes options to increase capacity and to add new landing points, said Telxius.

According to Telxius, this new cable will comprise at least eight fiber pairs and 22 terabits per second per fiber pair, providing an initial estimated capacity of more than 170Tbps. 

CELIA will be used and operated by a consortium of carriers: Aruban telco Setar, which will be the landing partner for the system in Aruba; French carrier Orange, as landing partner in Martinique; Antiguan public utility company APUA as the landing partner in Antigua; and Telxius as the landing partner in Puerto Rico and Boca Raton.

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Telxius currently operates, directly and through partnerships, the Tikal, Mistral, Junior, Tannat, Brusa, SAM-1, PCCS, Unisur and Firmina cables in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Elsewhere, it operates the systems Marea, Dunant, Sat-3, Est-Tet and Alpal-2.

Firmina is a cable owned by Google connecting the US to Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, to which Telxius signed up last year. This month, Cirion also announced it was joining Firmina.

The cables Tannat (Brazil-Uruguay-Argentina) and Junior (Rio de Janeiro-Santo in Brazil) are also Google-owned and now reported by Telxius as being part of its portfolio following its partnership with the US tech giant.

Mistral (also known as South Pacific Cable System, SPCS), and Tikal (Tikal-AMX3) are both systems co-owned by Telxius with Mexican telco giant América Móvil.

Both were the latest subsea projects announced by Telxius in the region. Mistral went live in August 2021, connecting Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru and Chile. 

Tikal-AMX3, which will link Guatemala and the US with a branch to Cancún in Mexico, is under development and due to go live in 2026.

In April this year, Telxius opened an extension of the 2001-launched SAM-1 from San Juan in Puerto Rico to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. 

From San Juan, SAM-1 now connects with the company’s Brusa and PCCS, the latter co-owned with a consortium of telcos that includes Aruba's Setar.

San Juan should also be the landing point of CELIA, offering a four-cable connectivity route for Telxius.