In an attempt to address the growing demand for bandwidth intensive service and position the Caribbean region as a critical hub for communications between the United States and Latin America, Alcatel-Lucent (News 
- Alert) has decided to upgrade the MAYA-1 submarine cable system.
MAYA-1, owned by a consortium of telecoms companies, reportedly spans 4,400 km distance in a collapsed ring and connects seven strategic landing points in the Caribbean.
By upgrading the submarine cable system to 40 gigabits-per-second and increasing the activated data capacity four fold, Alcatel-Lucent hopes to strengthen the Caribbean region and lay the foundation for future potential upgrades.
To achieve 100G capabilities in the future, the subsea system will use Alcatel’s highly scalable, flexible solution based on the 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal equipment, which uses single carrier coherent technology.
This technology is expected to ensure the highest achievable capacity in the most cost-effective manner and also manages the wet plant along with the management system.
“Investing in new capacity on the Maya-1 system will enable the system owners to address the persistent demand for capacity allowing us to satisfy current demand and giving the flexibility to upgrade the system in the future to 100G to keep pace with ever-growing capacity requirements,” said Donnie Forbes, chairman of the MAYA-1 upgrade no.4 working group.
Officials at Alcatel-Lucent were keen on enhancing the communication infrastructure in Central and Latin America so that it could cope with increased broadband access requirements and with secure content delivery.
The company believed that its solution would offer the scalability required for staged upgrades and bandwidth increases without hurting its investments in the subsea plant.
In an effort to support the 'Broadband China' initiative, China's program to deliver high-speed broadband to more than 250 million homes by 2015, Alcatel-Lucent is helping to increase the capacity and reach of China Telecom's (News - Alert) fiber optic data network.
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Edited by
Brooke Neuman
