Among the multiple effects of the digital transformation is the significant impetus it has lent to projects for boosting communications in less-connected parts of the world and developing hubs.
Many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean that were previously areas of sparser connectivity are now seeing this impact. One country putting itself more on the global map is Ecuador, thanks to some newly emerging cable projects within the nation or nearby.
Key among these is the Carnival Submarine Network-1 (CSN-1), a 4,500km cable connecting Ecuador, Panama, Colombia and Florida’s west coast, including branching units to Central and South America. Construction of the cable got under way in 2022, with its scheduled opening for service in the first half of 2026 starting to loom large.
Communications boost
CSN-1 is a project of Ecuador-based infrastructure and telecoms operator Telconet in collaboration with Alcatel Submarine Networks. When the cable is ready, Carlos Pazmiño, CSN-1 project leader at Telconet, hopes it will welcome in a new era of communications for Ecuador and other parts of the wider region.
“If you look at infrastructure maps of the region, day by day there are more networks connecting people within countries,” he says. “As these also move towards being fibre-optic cables, the trend is to request more and more international connectivity.”
Before the start of this decade, notes Pazmiño, subsea cables between the US and South America often bypassed Ecuador to land in Peru, the country’s much larger neighbour, or Chile further south. However, as global demand has grown among carriers, enterprises and hyperscalers for denser networks with greater redundancy and resiliency, fresh opportunities are arising.
“Not a lot of initiatives were talking about Ecuador,” says Pazmiño. “That’s why, in 2020, we decided to move forward with this initiative to feed Ecuador with more connectivity and find new connectivity solutions for Central America and the Caribbean.”
Not one, but two
That is also why Telconet already has plans for another submarine cable, CSN-2, stretching 1,700km from Veracruz in Mexico to Apalachee Beach in Florida. Apart from further improving connectivity in Central America, this will help serve growing demand from data centres located in Querétaro in Mexico.
The timelines for CSN-2 are not currently confirmed, but once that cable comes into play, it will open up opportunities even further. The two cables will also complement the 6,000km Pacific Caribbean Cable System (PCCS), on which Telconet was a founding member when it launched in 2015 and that connects Ecuador, Panama, Colombia, Aruba, Curaçao, the British Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the US.
“Talking about connectivity today, you cannot talk about only one system, but a bunch of systems that you need for redundancy and reliability purposes,” explains Pazmiño, who is also chairman of the PCCS cable.
He explains that part of Telconet’s mission is to open up opportunities in the Caribbean between the US and Ecuador, after seeing many Caribbean initiatives talked about pre-2020 but much less in the way of actual activity. Pazmiño believes that his company’s bid to forge ahead has given it an edge on some others in the region that have since announced planned builds via similar routes and locations.
Lease of life
Furthermore, a number of other cables running between the regions are reaching the end of their life or are relatively old, requiring updated infrastructure to bring a new lease of life ready to support the new AI-centric world. Meanwhile, Ecuador’s proximity to the Caribbean and Central America provides a good location as a platform for traffic moving between regions.
In addition, Pazmiño cites two further data centres that Telconet is building in Ecuador to add to the two it already has, plus data centre-style facilities it is creating at landing stations there and in another countries. All of this will serve to grow connectivity in the region, bringing opportunities for companies ranging from hyperscalers to smaller customers that seek to meet needs in rural and underserved areas.
“Telconet is a company that has always worked with state-of-the-art solutions,” says Pazmiño. “The idea is to provide such services regionally and, ultimately, improve life for end customers.”
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