Miami-based TeleCuba has received permission from the US government to build the first modern submarine cable between the US and Cuba. The cable will be only 110 miles long and cost just $18M, but per mile it will probably have the largest effect on communications in its region than any cable has in a long time. Right now internet traffic goes in and out of the reclusive country via satellite, which means it is slow and expensive. The new cable, which is planned to go into service in 2011, will supposedly be able to carry as much as 8-10Tbps – a hefty number.
So the first question I asked was: who is TeleCuba? I’m not sufficiently connected with the Cuban-American community to have known, but after starting out with phone cards for that market they seem to handle much of the voice traffic between the two countries amongst other things. In other words, they stand to save lots of money with a cable and hence they really, really want to build one. I don’t know how much bandwidth will roll onto the cable when the time comes, but I wonder if Miami datacenters will see a boost in business when the time comes?
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Categories: Fiber optic cable · Undersea cables
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What happened to TeleCuba ? Is this happening ?