Alcatel Submarine Networks was chosen to supply the Caribbean European Territories Cable project (CELIA) that will connect Aruba, Martinique, Antigua, Puerto Rico and Boca Raton in Florida over a stretch of 3,700 km.

Per multiple news reports, the CELIA cable—to have an estimated capacity of 170 Tbps across eight fiber pairs, with a minimum of 22 Tbps per pair—will support continuous traffic growth in the Caribbean. The project is scheduled to go live in the third quarter of 2027.

Per an EU project description, the CELIA CETC segment of CELIA has two European Partners: ORANGE as French operator and SETAR as a Dutch operator. It will improve the connectivity conditions of two French and Dutch Caribbean islands, Martinique and Aruba respectively. The new cable will cover approximately 1,888 km. The cities where the landing stations will be installed are Le Lamentin (Martinique, France) and Baby Beach (Aruba, The Netherlands).

Existing cables that are located in the Caribbean region include the Eastern Caribbean Fiber System (ECFS), ECLink, and the Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS).

The project will be able to sustain up to at least year 2050 the traffic growth for all citizens of Aruba and French Caribbean territories with almost unlimited bandwidth, low latency and high resilience. This new infrastructure will enhance their connectivity to the rest of the world and they will be equally connected compared to continental users from a digital point of view.

“The CELIA project represents a significant advancement in connectivity and will improve