Digicel partners Orange on Deep Blue One subsea cable system

Digicel confirms that it is to build its Deep Blue One subsea cable and is partnering with Orange to extend the system from Trinidad to French Guiana.

According to the company, Deep Blue One will provide “best in class connectivity” to French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago, with the capability to connect offshore oil and gas rigs in support of the industry boom in the region.

“With subsea fibre providing the backbone of the global economy and serving as a catalyst to economic development, our substantial investment in submarine capacity underpins our confidence in the development of the region,” said Oliver Coughlan, Group CEO at Digicel.

“A great example of this is the connectivity options we will be able to provide, both onshore and offshore, to the oil and gas industries in countries like Guyana and Suriname as they capitalise on the boom in the region.”

The 2,000km Deep Blue One cable has five branching units with the ability to provide offshore rigs with anywhere from two to eight fibre pairs in each segment, offering a minimum of 12TBps of capacity, per fibre pair.

In addition, the cable has been routed to be able to connect the various offshore oil and gas rigs and will include new cable landings in Trinidad, Tobago – with a new route between Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname. The French Guiana leg to Trinidad is 1,600km long.

“As a Digital Operator serving over 13 million customers in 32 countries globally, we’re focused on driving economic opportunities for our customers,” said Peter Hobbs, group director of international and wholesale business at Digicel Group.

“This is an exciting next phase for us – it’s about delivering quality, reliability, performance – and importantly, opportunity. We’re excited to get going on this.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Orange will act as landing party in Cayenne for the French Guiana branch and will operate the cable landing station on behalf of Digicel while its subsidiary Orange Marine, will be responsible for laying the cable.

“This partnership with Digicel allows us to increase capacity across the Caribbean while providing a service that is in line with the expectations, lifestyles and consumption patterns of digital users,” said Jean-Luc Vuillemin, executive vice president of Orange International Networks Infrastructures and Services.

“The 12Tbps of our express fibre pair on Deep Blue will allow us to provide a secure solution to our existing cable systems in the region, namely Kanawa, while connecting our Caribbean territories to the rest of the world with high quality bandwidth and low latency for end users”.

The new system will complement Digicel’s existing 3,000km subsea, Southern Caribbean Fiber network which connects 20 islands in Eastern Caribbean.

In turn, Deep Blue One will complement Orange existing 1746km Kanawa subsea cable, which was commissioned early 2019.

Cable installation is due to start in mid-2023, with completion expected by early 2024. Capacity Media