Survey ship Ridley Lawrence arrived at the Port of Santiago to map eastern Cuban waters for an undersea fiberoptic cable linking Venezuela, Cuba and Jamaica, Prensa Latina reported.

The cable is of strategic importance for Cuba to improve, and lower costs of, Internet access. Due to the embargo, Cuba cannot tap into U.S.-owned cables surrounding the island.

The vessel was surveying the cost near Maiquetía in Venezuela early this month and will move on to Jamaican waters after mapping eastern Cuba. The landing point in Cuba will be at Siboney, near Santiago. Actual cable installation won’t begin until early next year, later than previously announced.

Now in Santiago de Cuba: The Ridley Thomas survey vessel. PHOTO: Laurent Le Quan Tho

 

The cable will be operated by Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe SA, a Venezuelan-Cuban state joint venture. Gran Caribe picked Alcatel Shanghai Bell, a Chinese joint venture of Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent, to install the $70 million cable.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.