Gulf Bridge International (GBI), the Middle East’s first privately owned submarine cable operator, and Tinet, a global carrier exclusively committed to the IP and Ethernet wholesale markets, have announced that the companies have entered into a partnership agreement that will extend Tinet’s international connectivity into the ME region and allow GBI to offer more services throughout Europe. The partners will also benefit from one another’s extended network and service offerings.

New Submarine Cable Systems

SEAS Contract Awarded to Alcatel-Lucent

Alcatel-Lucent has announced that it has signed a contract worth more than US$30 million with Seychelles Cable System (SCS) to build the Seychelles East Africa System (SEAS) linking Victoria in Seychelles, to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

UNIFI Communications, a leading US-based international carrier, and Alcatel-Lucent, a leading provider of end-to-end undersea cable systems today announced the signature of the Balkans-Italy Network (BIN) Phase 1 Supply Contract.  Alcatel-Lucent will provide turn-key implementation of Albania’s first private undersea fiber optic cable system, which will connect Tirana, Albania to Bari, Italy. The network is expected to begin providing service by the end of 2011.

Alcatel-Lucent has announced that it has been selected by eFive Telecoms, a South African telecommunications company, to build a new submarine cable network linking the west coast of Africa to South America. The system will be composed of two trunks -- the first one connecting South Africa to Angola and Nigeria, and the second trunk linking Angola to Brazil. This end-to-end project will further increase connectivity in Africa, deliver additional capacity for wholesale and will also enhance service and traffic protection by providing critical cable route diversity to South America.

Since the beginning of the submarine fiber optic cable era in the late 1980s, developing countries with limited finances and small populations could not justify the investment in submarine cables.  That has changed in recent years as the growth of the Internet makes reliable, high-speed access vital for economic development and the general well being of the population.  Three recent examples demonstrate how developing small market countries are now embracing submarine cables.

We reported last week that Indian telecommunications giant Bharti Airtel’s acquisition of Telecom Seychelles Limited, the leading telecom operator of Seychelles (see Submarine Cable World NewsFeed for August 13, 2010), might finally push the build of a long-discussed submarine fiber optic cable to the island nation.

Jose Rafael Vargas, the president of the Dominican Republic’s telecommunications regulator, Institute of Telecommunications (Indotel), has announced that the installation of a planned submarine fiber optic cable system will triple the country’s bandwidth and help reduce interconnection costs and, therefore, telephone and Internet rates in the Dominican Republic.

In a separate but related announcement, Bharti Airtel said that its Board of Directors has approved the acquisition of 100 % of Telecom Seychelles Limited, the leading telecom operator of Seychelles, for an enterprise value of US$62 million.

An Indian carrier that is rapidly becoming a global operator plans to expand its submarine cable offerings globally to target business opportunities in over 100 countries by 2013.

We have noted in past issues that with Internet demand booming, international carriers are racing to keep up.  Capacity sale announcements are being made on a regular basis and existing submarine cables are being upgraded to add badly needed capacity.