Mario Montero, Chief Commercial Officer, Trans Americas Fiber
Central America and the Caribbean are about to be connected to a cable system with low latency and high capacity that will help to boost data transfers.
Developed by Trans Americas Fiber System, a UK company backed by Global Telecommunications Investment and LW Subsea Holdings, works on the TAM-1 are underway, and it is due to be ready for service in 2025. With an initial length of 7,000km and with AT&T asan anchor tenant, the cable will connect several countries with dozens of landing stations.
In this interview, CCO Mario Montero provides details about the current status of the project, the next steps, expansion possibilities, and new business opportunities.
BNamericas: What’s the status of the project schedule?
Montero: Unlike many systems we have heard of over the last few years, we wanted to announce it only when the project was completely ready to be announced. We did that in September 2023.
The cable is fully funded from a financing standpoint. It has a contract in force with Xtera, which leads a group of vendors. It also leads a turnkey process, in which EGS is involved and with whom we finished all the marine surveys of what we call the ‘southern arm.’
The marine survey for this main southern trunk, which ends in Barranquilla, Colombia, Puerto Limón in Costa Rica, and María Chiquita in Panama, was concluded on December 15.
The marine survey for the northern stretch was contracted with Fugro. This survey started on January 24 and we’re now 90% advanced.
I would say that in no more than 8–10 days, we will finish the marine survey for the northern part. That would complete the entire survey for phase one, which is the first 7,000km of the system.
BNamericas: What about the equipment and electronics part?
Montero: We’re very advanced with the issue of equipment. All the electronics are already in production. Long-term production is underway with Xtera, which is doing the wet part of our project.
The submarine fiber is developed by Nexans, and they are also already in production, in line with our own needs and times.
We have the cable projected to be ready for service [RFS] in Q3 of 2025. This is for the southern arm, which let’s say is our main trunk, with 24 fiber pairs.
About three months later, in Q4, we will have the RFS for the northern part, as the project began with parallel schedules.
We’re all on track and on schedule. We’re very advanced in permit issues. Most of the landing stations are also defined.
BNamericas: What’s the strategy for these landing stations?
Montero: To try to take advantage of the existing structure as long as that structure serves the purposes of the cable not only technically, but from a strategic standpoint.
That is, it has to be a sufficiently suitable infrastructure that doesn’t affect the neutrality that we promise for the system.
Remember that our first anchor customer is AT&T, so the two stations we’re using in Florida, one in Vero Beach, the other in North Miami, Hollywood, are theirs. We also use their stations in Miramar, Puerto Rico, and in Butler’s Bay on St Croix.
As for the rest, so far in the process, we have decided to build three stations, which are going to be our own.
BNamericas: Which ones?
Montero: They are María Chiquita, in Panama because it’s a strategic issue, it’s a terminal point for our southern trunk. There are 24 fiber pairs, so it was important that this infrastructure was proprietary.
Also, for Puerto Cortés, in Honduras, we decided to build our own station. This is in the process as well. And in Puerto Barrios, in Guatemala, due to a diversity of issues, we didn’t want to use the existing infrastructure.
All the other stations are from an anchor or a partner that had enough and adequate infrastructure to make it available to our cable.
In Panama, it was also crucial to have this station because in later phases of the cable we plan to cross the country from coast to coast, and take the system out through the Pacific and going south. We’re thinking about connecting Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru along the Pacific coast.
And we have some subsequent phases.
In the Caribbean, we’re connecting Puerto Rico, St Croix, and the Dominican Republic, but the system will be ready with branching units targeting multiple additional markets, which we plan to connect in future phases.
Many of them are accelerating, there’s a lot of interest from local markets. The cable is ready, for example, to connect with Jamaica,the Cayman Islands, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dutch Antilles.
BNamericas: What are the prospects for these future expansions?
Montero: Virtually any island in the Caribbean can be connected in future phases. Obviously, this depends a lot on the evolution we’re having, the size of the markets, and how we can group them.
Because the great challenge in the Caribbean is that there are many islands, small islands, that do not have, let’s say, sufficient critical mass. But if we can group them into hubs, it makes sense to deploy the cable. And it depends a lot also on partnerships and everything that we’re developing.
But we felt the urgency of making a cut, and that is why in September we decided to announce this first phase of 7,000km, 24 pairs of fiber in the south, and 12 pairs in the north, for a system whose minimum capacity, according to the design, is 650Tbps. On the longest route, which today is Vero Beach-Puerto Limón, we achieve a capacity of 18Tbps per fiber pair.
BNamericas: As an anchor tenant, does AT&T have exclusive use of fiber pairs in the system?
Montero: AT&T, in addition to being an anchor tenant, is an important strategic partner because for us to resolve the issue of all landing points, in all US territories, that was strategically important.
AT&T initially has capacity for its territories, say Puerto Rico and St. Croix, and we also give them a priority right to use capacity in the event they require it in other markets.
But they don’t have a reserved fiber pair in the entire system.
BNamericas: Are there other clients signed besides AT&T?
Montero: Yes, we cannot disclose them yet, but we have several anchors. The landing partners, let’s say from Colombia, to Mexico, are already defined. The one from the Dominican Republic is quite advanced.
There are some fundamental criteria in this selection: one is that there’s a beach manhole infrastructure to adequately serve the cable. Also, that there’s enough capillarity, backhaul providers already arriving at the site, because obviously what interests us is that everyone can connect.
And then in some special cases, we have evaluated the possibility of having edge data centers close to the facilities so we can integrate into them.
BNamericas: In Panama, Sparkle just inaugurated its Digital Gateway data center on the opposite coast.