TBI's state-of-the art system will connect Bermudian residents and businesses to the world with virtually unlimited access to the most modern high-speed telecommunications services for telephone and fax calls, internet and other computer data transmissions, international private line services, and global video-conferencing.
TBI's new fibre-optic cable system is intended to augment TBI's successful international telecommunications network that is already fully operational and providing Bermuda residents and businesses with world-wide telecommunications services at significantly lower rates than any other long-distance company on the Island.
The cable will have more than ten times the capacity of all of the Island's existing cable systems combined, officially ending the era of overseas callers getting busy signals from overloaded circuits. At the same time, TeleBermuda's state-of-the art technologies will usher in a new era of overseas telecommunications that are virtually free of static, echo or interruptions. The capacity of the system will also allow Bermuda to become an international hub of global telecommunications.
TBI's new cable system is expected to be fully operational by Fall 1997.
TBI Director and spokesman Kenneth Spurling said the new fibre-optic network is "a major milestone for Bermuda that will forever change the way all Bermuda residents communicate with the rest of the world, and the rest of the world communicates with Bermuda".
Mr. Spurling added that the new cable system is all part of TBI's commitment to its many new customers and to the Government of Bermuda.
"TeleBermuda promised to provide Bermuda with the best telecommunications system at lower rates, and that is exactly what we are delivering," Mr. Spurling said today.
The fibre-optic cable is being laid across more than 1,350 kilometers of the ocean floor from Annie's Bay (St. David's) to Tuckerton, New Jersey, where it will interconnect with TBI's world-wide telecommunications network.
The first cable vessel is due to arrive in Bermuda on Thursday, June 26. On Saturday, June 28, it is scheduled to begin laying the first leg of the cable from the TeleBermuda International Telecommunications Centre at St. David's to a point approximately 2.5 kilometres out to sea.
The first leg of cable initially will be floated with buoys to its full length. Divers will then begin lowering the cable gently to the ocean floor in the precise path approved by Government, and which follows an abandoned sonar cable.
During the first week of July, a large tran-Atlantic cable ship, the C.S. Global Mariner, is scheduled to pick up the first leg of the cable and begin laying the rest of the undersea cable network to the New Jersey international telecommunications terminal.
The C.S. Global Mariner is owned and operated by Submarine Systems International, responsible for laying the fibre optic cable, under contract with TBI.
For more information please contact:
Kenneth Spurling
Director - TeleBermuda International Limited
296-9000
For photo opportunities please contact:
Joanne MacPhee - 292-0035