UK-based Cable & Wireless Communications Plc (CWC) on Tuesday entered into a strategic alliance with the Caribbean’s Columbus Networks, to form a joint venture to provide wholesale bandwidth capacity in the Caribbean and Americas Region.

The venture will be called CNL-CWC Networks and in addition, CWC Wholesale Solutions, a subsidiary of CWC has entered into a separate services agreement with Columbus Networks under which Columbus will provide certain operation and monitoring services to the firm.

Between them, CWC and Columbus operate sub-sea cable networks in the Caribbean and Central American region of approximately 42,000 kilometres with connectivity to 42 countries. The joint venture company will serve as the sales agent of both for international wholesale capacity but Columbus will be the managing partner with a 72.5 per cent share. CWC Wholesale Solutions will provide support and management resources.

The companies said that demand for data capacity is growing rapidly in the Caribbean and Americas region, driven by the increasing availability of, and consumer demand for, mobile data and fixed broadband services. The interconnected networks will enable more self-healing fibre optic rings with a future planned migration to a fully meshed network environment that will significantly improve the region’s access to international capacity and better meet the increasing demands for reliability and performance, the companies said.

” In the coming months, customers will begin to enjoy much greater route choice, improved reliability and higher performance as the joint venture rolls out innovative, new service offerings spanning clear channel services, IP transit, carrier Ethernet and carrier MPLS,” said Paul Scott, president of Columbus Networks.

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