Azteca Comunicaciones Colombia tapped Alcatel-Lucent to help with the installation and operation of a national fiber optic telecommunications network designed to benefit people in 753 municipalities. Financial terms of the agreement were not announced.
Last year, the Unión Temporal Fibra Óptica Colombia consortium, comprising Mexico’s TV Azteca and Total Play, won Colombia’s National Fiber Optic Project auction. The project is designed to deploy fiber optic cables connecting 90% of the country by 2014.
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The National Fiber Optic Network Project is part of Colombia’s Vive Digital plan that aims to boost Internet penetration across the country in an attempt to decrease poverty, generate jobs, and improve and increase competitiveness and productivity. One of the program’s goals is to increase broadband coverage from 27.2% to 95.5% by 2014. The Colombian government is looking to deploy fiber-optic cable networks in 1,078 municipalities by 2014, which means connecting 753 additional municipalities by implementing 15,000 kilometers (about 9,300 miles) of fiber-optic cable.
Azteca Comunicaciones Colombia said it is working with Alcatel-Lucent’s point-to-point fiber broadband access technology and a combination of optical transport and Internet Protocol routing solutions to support high-speed video, voice and data connections to multi-tenant buildings, businesses, government offices and individual homes.
