ANTONIO Garcia Marichal, the Cabildo’s Innovation Minister, hopes the insular telecommunications ring will be completed within two years, which will enable the whole Island to enjoy the same internet speed and access.
“We are ready for the second phase, and, once awarded, the completion time is eight months,” he said. “So it will be completed by the end of next summer.
The Minister added: “Then, with the backbone broken, the next phase of the project will be drawn up for last area of the motorway.
“The Cabildo would take the bids in late 2016 and start work in the second half of 2017, and the core of the ring would be finished in two years.
Marichal told the local press: “The section already finished is the fibre-optic section, which goes from La Laguna to Armenime, in Adeje.
“With fibre, which has been authorised by the Commission of Telecommunications, we will have all homes covered within four or five years. And we will have three operators, from traditional telephone services Telefónica, Vodafone and Orange.
“The intention is that each and every one of our houses will be able to offer a good internet connection and, above all, will offer an honest price and good quality, accordingly.”
The Innovation Minister said this infrastructure “could have connections in about three or four years at a price of 17 or 25 euros, which is impossible today. “Many companies do not have 100 meg internet connection in the metropolitan area, and traditional operators do not invest in infrastructure by the volume on Tenerife.
“And, having a million people, they have no chance to recover short-term investment needed to make it.
“Therefore, we facilitate this deployment. We do the infrastructure and the operators rent and pay for the use of our network.”
Marichal added: “there are already operators such as Orange and Vodafone, who are knocking at our door because they want to use our infrastructure to reach all the insular territory.
“But as with fibre-optics, Tenerife is at the forefront. With this we create opportunities, for example, like Madrid, which has multi-offers when accessing operators, and can develop new sectors and business activities.
“We want e-commerce, and, with companies located in Tenerife and want to provide services abroad, everything is based on networks of broadband communication.”
