The roll-out is designed to meet increasing demand from both mobile and fixed-line customers in urban areas for faster broadband services.
“We were the first service provider to offer IPTV (digital TV) and 4G LTE in Colombia and Latin America, and now we are offering 100G speeds for ultra-broadband access in Colombia’s major cities,” said Marc Eichmann, president at UNE.
Eichmann said that internet access is spreading rapidly across Colombia and he expects this demand to continue accelerating as it becomes increasingly essential to the Colombian lifestyle.
“With this new upgrade to our network, UNE will be able to meet that demand for a long time to come,” he added.
UNE is using Alcatel’s photonic service switch platform as part of the network transformation, which has landing points in Cartagena, Barranquilla and Tolu; the main capital cities include Bogota, Medellin, Bucaramanga, Cucuta, Cali, Ibague, Neiva and Popayan.
“Upgrading the UNE network backbone to 100G capacity has been challenging due to the distances involved, but our high-performance solution has helped UNE resolve these issues,” said Carlos Peña, leader of Alcatel-Lucent activities in the Andean region.
“Very soon people in all of Colombia’s major cities will be able to enjoy optimal data speeds for their video and data access needs.”
In December last year, GlobeNet completed an extension to its subsea network from Colombia to the US and UNE is now the anchor tenant on the route.
