Venezuela-Cuba undersea link to be lit in 2010

Gran Caribe Telecommunications, a Venezuelan-Cuban joint venture, has finished mapping out a planned 1,550km underwater fiber-optic cable linking the two countries, and is in the process of designing details of the project and selecting a provider to build the system. A spokesperson for the start-up company, formed by state-run Telecom Venezuela (formerly CVG Telecom) and Cuba’s Telecommunication Signals Transport Co (Transbit), said a main supplier will be chosen in August and the submarine cabling deployed by the end of 2009 or early 2010; the system could be up and running in the first half of 2010. Gran Caribe plans to lay two pairs of fibre-optic cables running from the Venezuelan state of Vargas to the province of Santiago de Cuba, potentially increasing the island’s international communications capacity by 3,000 times.