Connecting a Landlocked Country

07/08/2024

Uesley Correa, CEO Telecom ISP Solutions

Submarine cables: fundamental structure to maintain and support connectivity among the continents around the world. These cables are designed to be redundant, resilient, and capable of handling large amounts of data traffic. However, a primary requirement to access these submarine cables and thereby connect directly to TIER1 options and data transport channels is to have a maritime coast. These cables make landfall at specialized facilities known as Landing Stations.

But the Internet is democratic. Everyone should have equal access, without distinction. Yet, due to geographical limitations, landlocked countries cannot have direct access to these Landing Stations and Submarine Cables. To achieve better connectivity, these countries must use land infrastructure of neighboring countries with maritime coasts to reach the submarine cables.

Nevertheless, using the infrastructure of neighboring countries to connect to submarine cables introduces additional challenges, such as taxes and tariffs of the country concerned, foreign currency costs, maintenance and support regulations linked to the telecommunications laws of the foreign country, to mention just a few.

When stakeholders in the landlocked country do not fully understand the impact of these challenges, they may mistakenly believe it makes no difference to host a service on a cloud outside the country, store data on foreign platforms, or address other related issues.

At LACNIC 42, I will have the privilege of moderating the panel titled: Connecting a Landlocked Country In this panel—where I will be joined by Walter Godoy from Giganet, Victor Talavera from TIGO, Carlos Sanabria from PIT Bolivia, and Juan Ardissone from MITIC—we aim to bring together various stakeholders from landlocked countries to understand the strategies used to improve interconnection, reduce costs, and improve service quality and accessibility. Registration for the event is now open, and we would be delighted to have you join us, either in person or virtually. The more participants we have, the more enriching the discussion will be, and the better we will understand the opportunities for optimizing connectivity in landlocked countries.

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