Government could subsidise an international telecoms company to build a new branch of a subsea information superhighway into Cayman, under legislation that goes to Parliament this week.
The Submarine Cable (Telecommunications Resilience) Bill aims to allow government to partner with a private company to build a branch route from existing underwater cable networks into Cayman.
Cayman relies on two ageing underwater pipelines for almost all of its off-island data connectivity. Updating and providing resilience on that network is considered “critical national infrastructure” vital to the economy and Cayman’s way of life.
“This is not optional; it is an essential for financial services, healthcare, education, aviation and national security,” Minister of Infrastructure Jay Ebanks told MPs last month.
Everything from Netflix to conference calls and banking transactions runs through those pipelines – part of a much wider network of cables snaking across the ocean floor, all over the globe.
Ranulf Scarbrough, government’s lead official on the subsea cable modernisation project, said investment in upgrading and providing redundancy on Cayman’s telecoms lifeline was like taking out an insurance policy on the Islands’ $5-billion-a-year economy.
He said the legislation before Parliament – if passed this week – will enable officials to go out to bid on a new kind of public-private partnership.
Government accepts that the potential return on investment from Cayman’s small population makes it unlikely that another commercial operator would invest significant funds in new infrastructure without incentive.
“If the market can’t get the payback from the investment it needs to make, then you have a problem where market forces aren’t going to deliver you the infrastructure that you think your economy needs,” said Scarbrough.
“You can either go and build that entirely yourself, or in this case, what we’re trying to do is run a competition for a partner to come in to see who needs the least amount of funding to top up their investment to make the Cayman Islands connection viable.”
He said a similar principle was used to build out telecoms infrastructure in rural areas in the UK. There are at least four subsea cabling projects currently taking place, “in the neighbourhood”, he added.
If the legislation goes through, he expects a bid process to find a commercial partner to begin in the new year.
Maya 1 subsea cable multi-million-dollar upgrade
In a separate development, Liberty Networks, the parent company of Flow, recently announced a multi-million-dollar upgrade to the Maya 1 subsea cable into Cayman.
The reconfigured cable system, branded Maya 1.2, should allay public fears about the threat of a digital blackout, Liberty Networks’ Carmine Sorrentino, chief commercial and operating officer, said in an interview with the Compass.
He said the upgrades would improve quality, increase internet speeds and bolster national resilience. That project is part of a $250 million investment in regional subsea cables. It also creates the potential for a third cable into Cayman via Liberty’s pan-regional MANTA network. That is not part of the current investment from the company, but Sorrentino said the potential exists to add a branching route into Cayman in the future if desired.
Scarbrough said adding a new cable link is not just about resilience.
He said, “It is also to enable the most optimistic forecasts for growth of the [Cayman Islands’] economy, the finance sector and the tourism sector. All of those are reliant on connectivity.”
The bill is expected to be debated in this Parliamentary session which begins Wednesday, 10 Dec.