Above: Stephen Scott, CEO of Deep Blue Cable, and Michael Rieger, VP of Sales & Business Development at TE SubCom sign the agreement to develop a new Caribbean subsea fiber-optic network. Photo via Marketwire.

On July 11, 2017, Marketwire carried the story of the partnering of Deep Blue Cable with TE Subcom to build and deploy a new subsea fibre-optic system to serve the Caribbean region.

According to the release…

The pan-Caribbean system design spans nearly 12,000 km with initial landing points in 12 markets throughout the region, including the Cayman Islands, Curaçao, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, and Turks & Caicos Islands, with dual diverse landings in the U.S., which will include the first landing of a cable on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

The Deep Blue subsea cable network, which will offer an initial capacity of 6 Tbps per fibre pair and is projected to be completed in Q4 of 2019, will ensure availability, competitive pricing and capacity resilience.

Digicel Chairman, Denis O’Brien

One of the major shareholders in the new broadband backbone company has since been revealed to be Digicel founder and chairman Denis O’Brien, according to this story in the Jamaica Gleaner.

“Deep Blue Cable and Digicel Group have a common shareholder, but Deep Blue Cable has its own management team and is separate and distinct from Digicel Group,” said Deep Blue CEO Stephen Scott in response to Gleaner Business queries.

The Marketwire release notes that…

Spanning approximately 12,000 km, the Deep Blue cable’s initial landing points will be in 12 markets throughout the region, including the Cayman Islands, Curaçao, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad & Tobago, Turks & Caicos Islands, and the U.S., in addition to three other markets

The proposed Deep Blue Network Map. Image from the Deep Blue website.