Underwater cable will connect Latin America and the U.S.

By Pittaluga Abogados

Uruguay's government-owned telecommunications company, Antel (National Administration of Telecommunications) announced on October 9, 2014, the construction of a new undersea fiber-optic cable that will connect South America with the United States.

The new route is expected to begin immediately and is planned to be completed by the end of 2016. It will join Maldonado (Uruguay) with Fortaleza (Brasil), Santos (Brasil) and Boca Raton (United States). With 10,556 km (6,560 miles) long and six fiber pairs, it should increase the overall bandwidth of existing subsea cable systems by 64 Tbps (terabits per second) of capacity.

The investment is part of a multinational project by Antel, operators Algar Telecom (Brazil) and Angola Cables (Angola), Google and TE Connectivity SubCom, the selected provider for the project. All four companies will built and operated the route.
Latin America has a connected population of almost 300 million people and has become one of the fastest growing regions in the world in terms of Internet penetration. Through the new cable, called Monet, operators expect to sustain the current needs of Internet users in the region and prepare for increased demands in the future.

Thanks to a strong investment and diverse offer of products and services, Uruguay has become a leader in Internet access and speed in Latin America, with a growing deployment of fiber-optic and LTE networks, as well as high-quality contents (HD/4K) and cloud-based services.