- March 12, 2021
- Posted by: medium
- Category: National
The company in charge of the work is Galapagos Cable Systems (GACASYS S.A.). The cable will have a length of about 1,280 kilometers and a useful life of 25 years.
The deployment of a submarine cable of about 1,280 kilometers will increase the current internet bandwidth in the Galapagos Islands tenfold and will position the islands at the same level as the continent. This was announced yesterday by President Lenín Moreno; the Minister of Telecommunications and the Information Society (Mintel), Andrés Michelena, and the manager of the National Telecommunications Corporation CNT EP, Martha Moncayo.
From the Harbor Master's Office, Naval Base, on Santa Cruz Island, the authorities presented the submarine cable deployment project to the Galapagos Islands, framed in the Digital Ecuador plan.
The development of this project is the result of the articulated work that CNT EP has been developing since 2018, to obtain complete information on technical feasibility, previous studies and the environmental record for the effective execution of the project.
Galápagos Cable Systems (GACASYS S.A.), as a direct investor, will develop the cable installation together with its strategic partners: Xtera, with more than 60 projects in the production of equipment, and Prysmian Group/Siemens, an Italian multinational, which is in charge of the manufacturing of electrical and telecommunications cables, with extensive experience in deploying underwater networks. CNT EP is not an investor in this project.
“My business was growing and I wanted to scale markets and needed the help of mentors… We wanted to learn how the other markets behaved,” says Zamriver.
The cable covers the Manta-Puerto Baquerizo Moreno route, in San Cristóbal; Puerto Ayora, in Santa Cruz and Puerto General Villamil, on Isabela Island. It has a length of approximately 1,280 kilometers, a useful life of 25 years and an initial capacity of 10 gigabits per second, which will be increased according to the requirements of the island's inhabitants. The total capacity of the cable is 4 terabits per second, more than 2,500 times the current capacity.
With the implementation of the cable, the development of scientific research, commerce, tourism and education will be promoted. In addition, it will allow the Galapagos archipelago to be served with high capacity and quality for national and international fixed and mobile telephone services, broadband internet access via fiber optics, 4G and 5G mobile services in the future.
The project will benefit 30,000 residents and approximately 250,000 tourists, based on annual influx before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Currently, connectivity to the Galapagos Islands has been carried out through satellite leasing, the cost of which represents the CNT EP.a total of $311 millionand according to the public company, to lower these values and offer a better telecommunications service to the archipelago, the best alternative is the fiber optic leasing scenario,which reduces the cost to $240,344,937.
At the moment the public company has 95% of the islands' market in fixed internet service and says that in the last two years it has increased the speed in the archipelago by more than 85%.