BOCA RATON – Columbus Networks has completed construction of a cable landing station in Boca Raton, Fla., marking the last major step before activating an $80 million express undersea fiber optic route that connects South America with the United States via Colombia and Florida.
The state-of-the-art landing station in Boca Raton is one of three along the 2,400-kilometer undersea fiber optic cable route. The other two stations are in Morant Point, Jamaica, and Cartagena, Colombia.
Columbus Networks and its affiliate companies now operate 35 landing stations throughout the Americas and Caribbean regions, offering an unmatched broadband network of multiple self-healing fiber rings for ensuring high performance and network reliability.
Columbus Networks held an official inauguration ceremony and building tour on Thursday, July 31 at the Boca Raton site to commemorate completion of the landing station. Boca Raton government officials along with representatives from various U.S. and regional telecommunications carriers, joined Columbus Networks executives at the ceremony.
“Boca Raton continues to develop as an international gateway for telecommunications access between the United States and the Caribbean and Latin America Region,” said Paul Scott, president of Columbus Networks. From Boca Raton, Columbus Networks is the only network provider with a direct express route to Colombia.
“Columbus Networks’ new landing station in Boca Raton creates geographical diversity from the current concentration of cable landings in Miami,” Scott said. “This significantly lessens the risk of service disruptions caused by major weather disasters as it is unlikely these will simultaneously hit both locations with sufficient force to impact our hardened facilities.”
For network redundancy and route diversity, Columbus Networks also maintains another major landing station in North Miami Beach, about 40 miles south of Boca Raton. “This is very appealing to other regional and international telecommunications carriers that require our services,” Scott said.
“The Colombia to Florida express route, dubbed CFX-1, represents one of the most important recent telecommunications projects for stimulating economic expansion, broadband growth and improved infrastructure reliability throughout the Caribbean and Latin America Region,” Scott said.
Once CFX-1 is activated next month, telecommunications traffic can move from Florida to Colombia and back in about 24 milliseconds, faster than a blink of an eye. A round-trip transmission from Florida to Jamaica can be completed within 15 milliseconds.
The new Boca Raton landing station is constructed to withstand sustained Category 5 hurricane-level storms with winds of more than 160 miles an hour. Exterior walls are constructed with 12-inch concrete blocks with three-quarter-inch reinforced steel bars in every cell and filled with high-strength concrete. The building is equipped with battery backup systems along with dual 500-kilowatts power generators, high-performance redundant air conditioners, latest fire prevention, detection and suppression systems, video surveillance and state of the art security systems.
