ARBR is a new cable system in development which will link Buenos Aires in Argentina to Sao Paulo in Brazil, co-owned by Seaborn and Argentine investment holding firm Grupo Werthein, which is due to go live in H1 2019.
The new agreement means the 2,700km cable will land in the CLS in Las Toninas, with Telecom Argentina then providing ARBR with dark fibre on a backhaul route running to Buenos Aires. It will also provide a point of present space in the Argentine capital.
"ARBR represents an ideal combination of local ownership with an independent operator to open up Argentina's telecommunications market to the world," said Dario Werthein of Grupo Werthein.
The ARBR system, which is Argentina's first independent submarine cable system, will be a four-fibre pair system with an initial maximum design capacity of 48Tbps. It will be developed and owned by the Seabras Group (an affiliate of Seaborn) and Werthein.
In Sao Paulo, it will link with Seaborn’s Seabras-1 subsea cable system which runs between New York and Brazil. The combined ARBR + Seabras-1 cables reflect a total project size of more than $575 million and offer one of the most direct links from Argentina to the US.
Seaborn named Xtera as the supplier for the ARBR cable in January, with construction due to start later this year. It also picked EdgeConneX for its Buenos Aires Edge Data Center (EDC) as the point of presence (PoP) in Argentina.
"The landing station, backhaul and POP to be provided by Telecom Argentina are perfect complements to our ARBR and Seabras-1 systems, enabling customers on ARBR to benefit from the most modern and direct route between Buenos Aires and New York," said Larry Schwartz, Chairman & CEO of Seaborn Networks.
Seaborn CEO Schwartz spoke to Capacity about the ARBR cable in our Subsea Special Report – check out the interview HERE
