The Chilean company that is developing the Humboldt undersea cable to Australia has confirmed that talks with scientific network customers in Australia, Singapore, and New Zealand have already begun.

Desarrollo Paıs manager of digital projects Natalia Lo ́ ́pez confirmed the discussions. She said an RFP, to be released “in the coming months” will further define the project costs. 

The undersecretary said the current project cost is US$394 million with an annual opex of US$18 million even if the original investment for the cable was expected to be US$650 million.

Meanwhile, Chile’s telecommunications undersecretary Claudio Araya also confirmed an Antarctic Humboldt extension study will commence. The move came as the Silica Networks of Argentina is also conducting its own study to lay a submarine cable to Antarctica.

Araya highlighted how Humboldt will be a gateway to Asia. “We have a very strong trade relationship between South America and Asia,” he said. 

“In the case of Chile, more than 50% of our exports go to the Asian continent. There is a tremendous potential for exchange, and digital content, and there is a lot of consumption of Asian content of different types. All of our traffic to Oceania and to Asia goes through the Northern Hemisphere of the United States.”

He also said the cable is expected to capture just under 20% of the traffic between South America and Asia. “By having this increase in international capacity there will be a decrease in [bandwidth] prices and this will mean that operators offer lower prices, boosting the penetration of broadband services throughout the region,” he further added.

Desarrollo Paıs is in talks with large telecommunications operators and content providers globally and she said the pre-sales phase will be critical to the cable’s future: “We do not expect to deploy a cable that has no use.” 

CAF principal executive Eduardo Chomali said it was mandatory to renew Latin America’s ageing undersea cable systems. 

“When one considers that these submarine cables have an estimated useful life of up to 25 years, what one sees is that we can run a risk of having a mass extinction of 31 submarine cables in the next ten years,” he said.

According to the executive director of Latin American academic network RedClara, Luis Cadenas, the impact on the research community of the Humboldt cable will be great because “the Latin American level has an increasing need to handle large amounts of data.”

“The Humboldt cable is going to represent enormous growth in terms of the links and capabilities of the region to cooperate and develop joint research capabilities with research and education networks located in Asia,” he further added. 

“Of the more than 140 [research] networks that exist [globally, many] are located in Asia, and [we need to] link with these research and innovation ecosystems.”