The Caribbean - Cable & Wireless East-West submarine cable

Telecom Investment Research Note

Synopsis

Following the announcement earlier this year by UK-based telecoms firm Cable & Wireless Communications (C&W) of their intention to install a new submarine fibre-optic cable linking Jamaica and the Cayman Islands in the west of the Caribbean with the British Virgin Islands in the east, these Caribbean regions are now poised for the imminent launch of commercial services along what is being called the new East-West Cable. The undersea East-West cable is also expected to land in the Dominican Republic, thus bringing to fourteen the number of Caribbean countries in which C&W operates.

Following the announcement, C&W’s Caribbean business LIME began installing the submarine cable which is expected to be operational by early 2011. The cable will more than double LIME’s data-carrier capacity in the region, which will go some way towards addressing the rising demand for high-speed broadband from residential and business customers alike across the Caribbean region.

The East-West cable is the third new undersea cable that C&W Communications has built in the region since 2008. This latest link will complete a Caribbean ‘network ring’ with C&W’s cable system currently linking 23 Caribbean countries. With the addition of the East-West cable, C&W anticipates that its ‘network ring’ will serve as a main data route from Latin America to the USA.

This telecom investment research note outlines the East-West cable project against the background of the existing undersea cable networks and the statistics of the growing Caribbean Internet usage.