Telecom Lead America: Alcatel-Lucent will upgrade the MAYA-1 submarine cable system – which spans 4,400km distance in a collapsed ring from Hollywood, Florida, US, to Tolu in Colombia.

The expansion will quadruple the activated data capacity to address demand for bandwidth-intensive services, as well as position the Caribbean as a critical hub for communications between North and South America.

The 40G subsea system will use Alcatel-Lucent’s single carrier coherent technology to lay the foundation for potential upgrade to 100G capabilities in the future.

“Investing in new capacity on the Maya-1 system will enable 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 #4 Working Group.

“The communication infrastructure in Central and Latin America must be able to cope with increased broadband access requirements and with secure content delivery. Our solution offers scalability for staged upgrades that meet significant bandwidth increments over time, while protecting investments in the subsea plant,” said Philippe Dumont, president, Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks.

Alcatel-Lucent will offer solutions based on the 1620 Light Manager submarine line terminal equipment, which uses single-carrier coherent technology to provide efficient use of the available optical spectrum. Designed to operate on different channel spacing grids, flexibility of the 1620 LM ensures the highest achievable capacity in the most cost-effective manner.

MAYA-1 submarine telecommunications cable system connects seven strategic landing points in the Caribbean, including Hollywood (USA), Cancun (Mexico), Puerto Cortes (Honduras), Puerto Limon (Costa Rica) Half Moon Bay (Cayman Islands), Maria Chiquita (Panama) and Tolu (Colombia) in a collapsed ring configuration.

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