Marking a significant investment in international submarine capacity for an underserved area of the Caribbean and Latin America, Digicel’s Deep Blue One submarine network will allow Orange to provide superior connectivity to the people of French Guiana through the buildout of the French Guiana to Trinidad leg of the subsea cable.
This new project demonstrates Orange’s commitment to always offer data capacity on two different secured paths to support the development of the local economic ecosystem of French Guiana.
Deep Blue One will complement Orange existing fully owned 1746 km long “Kanawa” cable, which was commissioned early 2019 as well as Orange’s existing networks based on Americas-2, ECFS, CBUS. This new system offers a secure and adaptive solution in the region to respond to increasing broadband customer requirements.
As French Guiana is undergoing deep digital transformation linked to exponential growth of data usage (FTTH, 4G+, and soon 5G), Orange is continuously anticipating connectivity needs in the area, and will support its evolution for the next 20 to 25 years with this new investment.
Deep Blue 1 cable commissioning is planned to begin mid-2023, and is expected to be completed in early 2024. The 2,000 km cable installation for Deep Blue One has five branching units, plus the capability to provide connectivity for offshore rigs, with anywhere from two to eight fibre pairs in each segment, offering a minimum of 12Tbit/s capacity per fibre pair. The French Guiana leg to Trinidad is 1,600 km long.
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 in charge of laying the cable.
Jean-Luc Vuillemin, executive vice president of Orange International Networks Infrastructures and Services says, “At Orange, we are committed to supporting the strong growth of broadband usage in French Guiana which is one of the most dynamic in terms of digital growth in the area. 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.
It is also a concrete proof of our commitment made to French Guiana to provide a modern and resilient worldwide connectivity solution on at least two distinct cable systems. 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”.
Orange is a major player in the global connectivity and submarine cable markets. Orange continues to make substantial investments in international connectivity projects, to guarantee and continue to improve the quality of its international network service with more than 40 submarine cables throughout the world,
With customers all over the world, Orange’s global network footprint connects more than 300 Points of Presence with 45,000 km of terrestrial fibre across Europe, the US, Africa and Asia.
Through its subsidiary, Orange Marine, the company also has access to a fleet of ships, and internationally-recognised expertise, placing it at the heart of deployment and maintenance for these connections, which are vital to all of its communications.