The ceremony was attended by the president of the agency, Andrés Tolosa, and the former president of Antel and current Minister of Industry, Carolina Cosse, who said that the submarine cable represents "a great boost for the digital economy of our country.
"The cable allows us to have the ability to control and absolute independence in the Internet world," he said. The hierarch described the new construction as "a historic milestone".
Cosse said that "this work is the locomotive of the 21st century". She added that "the future is now. This Uruguayan thread of the latest technology opens the gates to the new world with sovereignty," he said.
"The future is here, now, among us. Let's not go looking for it elsewhere," said the minister.
As reported, the oceanic cable will directly connect Uruguay and Brazil with the United States, linking the Brazilian cities of Santos and Fortaleza with Boca Raton (Florida) and Santos with Maldonado. The project began in 2012, during Cosse's presidency, was announced in 2014 with an investment of US$ 73 million and in November 2015 the contract between Antel and Google was signed. It represents a cumulative savings of US$ 195 million, according to data provided by the state-owned company in 2015.
The construction, which took two years, was carried out in partnership with Google and the companies Angola Cables (Angola) and Algar Telecom (Brazil). The new route is 10,556 km long and has six fibre pairs. The bandwidth of the existing submarine cable systems will be increased by 64 terabits (8000 gigabytes) per second of capacity.
The agreement signed with Google in 2015 allows that through the submarine cable, Antel can become an international provider of telecommunications services, the sixth in South America. The submarine fiber optic system itself "means independence and sovereignty for the country, with guaranteed bandwidth availability in the long term," said from the entity.
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