Recent news that Chile's Transportation and Telecommunications Ministry has awarded a US$3 million contract for an economic, technical and legal feasibility study for a Chile-to-China fibre optic cable is significant for a number of reasons.
The winners of the tender were a consortium made up of Telecommunications Management Group Inc, which provides global policy consultancy services in the information and communications technology (ICT) space, and submarine telecoms engineering group WFN Strategies LLC. The consortium began the study in early September and will extend its work throughout the first half of 2020.
There are high hopes on Chile's part that the underwater cable project will help to make the country a ‘digital hub’ for Latin America, as well as, to quote minister of Transport and Telecommunications Gloria Hutt, “facilitating the installation of data centres, trade, entrepreneurship and the creation of new businesses between the two continents”.
One question yet to be answered, however, is what route the cable will take. Recent reports in the New Zealand press indicate that Chile may ask New Zealand to allow the proposed US$500 million internet cable to come ashore in Auckland.
In addition China's state-run press agency Xinhua has reported that the cable could begin in the Chilean city of Valparaiso “passing New Zealand, Australia and French Polynesia” on its way to Shanghai. In this context, a New Zealand landing station en route would be useful. An alternative, more expensive, route could see the cable instead terminate in Japan.
Of course, with Chinese involvement in the global telecommunications industry being closely scrutinised by the United States government, a route that goes via New Zealand may be controversial. New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) is currently blocking a proposal from digital services company Spark New Zealand to use Huawei equipment in its proposed 5G mobile network.
On the upside, as Remi Galasso, chief executive of Auckland-based Hawaiki Cable, has pointed out, the China-Chile cable could represent a “unique opportunity for New Zealand to become a hub between South America and Asia”.
However, that opportunity, and the cable itself, are still matters for speculation. At the moment, a tender is some months off.
