Published: Wednesday, March 21, 2012
By Pedro Ozores
Business News Americas
Submarine cabling company Seaborn Networks’ project to connect Miami with Santos, on the coast of Brazil’s São Paulo state, is separate from state-run telco Telebras’ submarine cable project connecting Brazil, the US, Europe, Africa and South America’s Atlantic coast, Seaborn CEO Larry Schwartz told BNamericas.
The Seaborn Networks project, disclosed last week, will have a branch landing in Fortaleza, capital of Ceará state in northeastern Brazil. Activation is scheduled for 2014.
“We praise what Telebras and the Brazilian government are doing to boost infrastructure and expand the broadband national plan, and even lower interconnection costs. But this is a separate project,” Schwartz said.
Asked whether the company had spoken with Telebras about the possibility of linking into the subsea cable integration project, Schwartz declined to comment.
Telebras innovation and technology manager Paulo Eduardo Kapp, in turn, would only say that “negotiations are under way” with other possible partners, and he would neither confirm nor deny talks with Seaborn.
EXPRESS ROUTE
According to Schwartz, Seaborn Network’s project is intended to meet data traffic demand from international clients looking for connections between São Paulo state and the US.
The executive stressed that the Seabras-1 submarine cable is the first express route between the cities of Miami and Santos, “which results in the fastest fiber optic connection” between Brazil’s largest business center and the US.
As regards the branch landing in Fortaleza, Schwartz emphasized that only traffic to or from that city will pass through it.
“All other traffic will run directly between Santos and the US,” without passing through the northeastern city, he said. As such, the route is expected to provide significantly lower latency.
“Unlike other submarine cables that have been built, Seabras-1 will run directly from Santos to Florida, without a need to land in other locations on the way. The ability to run large amounts of capacity on a direct route of this distance was not possible 11 years ago, when the last set of submarine cables was built. But it’s achievable with today’s technology,” he added.
The executive also said that Seaborn’s consortium-like pricing for a privately owned submarine cable “is another industry first [that] has been met with an enthusiastic response.”
“This new approach responds to the needs of the world’s largest purchasers of wholesale capacity by combining the economics of participating in a consortium with the flexibility and independence of a private cable,” Schwartz noted. “We have a clear understanding of what is required to build and operate a viable business around this new pricing model.”
Seaborn – an independent, US-owned and operated company – has previously designed and operated more than 75 landing stations, 250 global points of presence and 250,000km of subsea fiber optic cable.
Posted on 21st March 2012