• Submitted by: manso
• Business and Economy
• 02 / 11 / 2011

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Following installation of a fiberoptic link from Venezuela to Cuba, a French cable vessel is beginning to lay an undersea cable linking Cuba and Jamaica.

The Île de Batz will begin the second phase of the ALBA-1 project Feb. 11, Venezuelan media reported. Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe S.A., the Venezuelan-Cuban state joint venture in charge of the $70 million project, hired Chinese subsidiary of Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent to install the cable.

Wilfredo Morales, president of Gran Caribe, told Venezuelan state TV that the link allows the Venezuelan government to access the worldwide web without depending on private players. Both the Venezuela-Cuba and the Cuba-Jamaica link are operated by Gran Caribe, which is owned 60 percent by the state-owned Telecom Venezuela and 40 percent by Cuba’s Transbit.

According to the Jamaica Gleaner, three private players — LIME, the Caribbean subsidiary of Britain’s Cable & Wireless Communications plc, its archrival Digicel Group, and Columbus Communications — bid for the Jamaica-Cuba leg in 2010. The Jamaican newspaper reported in March 2010 that LIME executives said the company was close to winning the bid. However, according to Venezuelan press reports, Gran Caribe is now in charge of the link to Jamaica.

ALBA-1 is planned to link to Haiti in the future.Just a week ago, LIME completed the installation of its new East-West undersea cable system linking Jamaica, the British Virgin Islands and the Dominican Republic. LIME also bought a majority stake in a Bahamas telecom.

Source: www.cubastandard.com/2011/02/10/undersea-cable-to-jamaica-underway/