Alcatel-Lucent  has signed a pact with a  group of telecommunications operators consisting of Cable & Wireless Communications, Setar, Telconet, Telefonica a Global Solutions and United Telecommunication Services (UTS) to deploy the Pacific Caribbean Cable System (PCCS), a 100G submarine cable system linking Jacksonville, Florida to Manta, Ecuador.
 
 The 6000km submarine cable system will strengthen digital links as demand grows rapidly throughout the Caribbean, Central and South America for online content such as tourism related services, sports coverage and digital TV. Work will start before the end of the year and commercial operations for the PCCS are scheduled to commence by the third quarter of 2014.
 
In addition to Florida and Ecuador, the system will connect the islands of Tortola, Puerto Rico, Aruba and Curacao, as well as Cartagena in Colombia and Maria Chiquita and Balboa in Panama. The system will have an ultimate design capacity of 80 Terabit-per-second, dramatically boosting connectivity and substantially increasing the availability of broadband services. Additionally, the PCCS will increase communications reliability and help reduce the risk of communications disruption by providing cable route diversity and alternative bandwidth access to existing cables in the region.
 
The Alcatel-Lucent solution to be deployed for the project includes an integrated 100G wet plant of cable optimized with coherent submarine fiber and high bandwidth repeaters, power feed equipment, and its 1620 Light Manager (LM) submarine line terminal equipped with advanced coherent technology. Offering unique flexibility and scalability to accommodate multiple data rate wavelengths, the Alcatel-Lucent 1620 LM enables seamless capacity upgrade on flexible grid for channel spacing without traffic interruption. The solution will be managed by the Alcatel-Lucent end-to-end submarine management system. As part of the turnkey contract, Alcatel-Lucent will also be responsible for project management, system design, marine operations and system commissioning.
 
“The PCCS will help the CALA region and its people to benefit from sustainable social and economic growth. Alcatel-Lucent’s industry-leading submarine technology and its invaluable customer commitment will help us deliver high-quality and reliable services to meet end-users’ demand.”, Carlos Pazmino, Chairman of the PCCS General Committee
 
“This new system will contribute to offer significantly higher-capacity to address the exponential growth in business and consumer-related data traffic. This project also reconfirms Alcatel-Lucent as a trusted partner in submarine communications, underlining our innovation, unique end-to-end expertise and turnkey execution ability”, said Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks.