Americas Region Caribbean Optical-Ring System (ARCOS) In Testing Phase

The ring system planned to connect the United States market with New Providence, two southern islands in the Bahamas, three Caribbean islands and nine countries in Latin America is scheduled for completion during the third quarter of the year. Recently, New World Network, the company developing the project, announced that The Bahamas’ connections in the fiber optic telecommunications ring “have been lit” and are now undergoing testing prior to the commencement of commercial operations.

The Bahamas Telecommunications Corporation (Batelco) is the Bahamian partner company for the ARCOS project, and currently has in place a fiber optic cable link, Bahama II, which provides high-speed access from New Providence and Grand Bahama to Florida and onto the Internet back-bone in the United States. Caribbean Crossings Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cable Bahamas Ltd., has undertaken to build a 5-segment, submarine fiber-optic cable system, the Bahamas Internet Cable System, linking Abaco, Eleuthera, Grand Bahama and New Providence with the United States.

New World Network has said that the activation of the first phase of ARCOS and the extra bandwidth capacity will provide *”a fast, reliable and efficient way of unleashing new opportunities for IT businesses.”* The company feels it is on schedule to become “market makers” in the region by accelerating business opportunities, making services more accessible to the end user and opening up advanced telecommunications to more than 200 million people in the region.