By Telecompaper
May 16, 2017
Chile has announced the relaunch of the ‘Fibra Optica Austral' project to roll out nearly 4,000 km of fibre-optic infrastructure in the southern Patagonia region at an event in Puerto Montt. The first tender for the USD 100 million project was postponed last year when just one company – Conexiones y Telefonía Austral – bid for one of the four sections of the proposed network. Under the redesigned terms of the tender, interested parties may now set up as a consortium, rather than individually as before, while the execution time has been extended from 18 to 26 months to fit in two summers.
The tender encompasses four stretches, one submarine cable between Puerto Montt and Puerto Williams, plus three land-based connections joining up the Los Lagos, Aysen and Magallanes regions. The aim is to start receiving bids by July with a view to completing the rollout in 2020.
