Sea and land survey works begin today for the island’s Fibre Optic Project.
The Government Information Unit said in a release on Tuesday that a team of surveyors onboard research vessel ‘RV Ridley Thomas’ will be in Montserrat’s waters from January 8 to 14, 2020 to conduct a marine survey of the proposed route in which cables for the subsea fibre optic project are to be laid.
As part of the mapping work, the surveyors from EGS, working on behalf of Southern Caribbean Fibre (SCF), will deploy a smaller vessel to Bunkum Bay to conduct some inshore and beach surveys. The ‘Ridley Thomas’ will then sail away from Montserrat surveying the route towards the proposed location of the Branching Unit, northeast of
Montserrat.
The marine survey is part of the work required to install a new subsea fibre optic cable system for Montserrat which will reconnect the island to the global information superhighway, via submarine fibre optic cables linked to Antigua and Guadeloupe. The installation of the cable is expected to be conducted in the second quarter of 2020.
In October 2019, the Government of Montserrat through the Capital Investment Programme for Resilient Economic Growth (CIPREG) signed a landmark multi-million-dollar deal with Southern Caribbean Fiber (SCF), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Digicel Group, for the installation and maintenance of a new subsea fibre optic cable system.
The Project is being overseen by the Programme Management Office in the Ministry of Finance, and the Department for Information Technology and E-Government Services (DITES) under the portfolio of the Office of the Premier.
