Nokia pipes fibre network into Amazon rainforest

The new subaquatic network is buried in the Amazon River, and apparently interconnects 500,000 users across 400 communities located in an area of the Amazon rainforest known as the three-border region, where Peru, Colombia and Brazil share borders.

Specifically, it connects the localities of Iquitos and Santa Rosa de Yaraví (Peru), Leticia (Colombia) and Tabatinga (Brazil), and its deployment will allow Global Fiber Peru to offer what it says is the first FTTH (Fiber-to-the-Home) broadband access service in the region, as well as multi-gigabit services for enterprise users. Global Fiber Peru was founded in 2015 as a subsidiary of Satelital Group and operates a fibre optic network with coverage throughout the country.

The deployment included Nokia’s 1830 Photonic Service Switch (PSS), 7750 service routers, 7250 interconnect routers, 7210 services access systems (SAS), network service platform (NSP), FX 8 and FX 16 optical line terminals (OLT), fibre optical network terminals (ONTs) and Nokia Beacon 1 devices.

FYCO, a local partner that specialises in fiber telecom networks in Latin America, also worked on the rollout and it and Nokia are also providing training, professional services and maintenance services as part of the job, we’re told.  

"This project is important as it provides fiber connections for the first time to hundreds of communities in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest,” said Osvaldo Di Campli, SVP & Head of Network Infrastructure Americas at Nokia. “Broadband connectivity helps communities and local businesses grow and prosper. We are very happy to be part of this project and appreciate Global Fiber Peru's trust in Nokia and FYCO, and we look forward to future projects together."

Obed Dionisio, CEO at Global Fiber added: "We're excited and proud to be the first company to have successfully deployed an optical fiber network in the depths of the Amazon River, connecting three countries. This achievement bridges a significant digital gap in remote areas previously inaccessible by traditional means. Through our partnership with Nokia, a leading telecommunications company, we've enabled these isolated communities to access high-speed internet, bringing them on par with urban areas in terms of connectivity."

The middle of the Amazon rainforest is the sort of place the mind might wander to when satellite companies talk about the difficulties of hooking up remote and otherwise hard to get to areas with terrestrial (or sub-terrestrial) connectivity infrastructure. Speaking generally, projects like this could serve as a counterpoint to the idea that non-terrestrial networks are necessarily the way to go in such situations – though of course there will be economic, technological and environmental factors unique to any given deployment area that might make one solution preferable to the other.