The Chamber of Commerce of Lanzarote has invited the director of Canalink to give an informative conference on a project "that will change the options of the Canary Islands in terms of connectivity with the world". For the moment, Lanzarote is not included, but the Chamber warns that this could change, depending on the public-private collaboration approaches that occur and the interest the island has in connecting to this project.
For this reason, the Chamber considers it essential to bring this information to companies and entrepreneurs, "to raise awareness and inform about this opportunity". This was stated by its president, José Torres Fuentes, who highlighted the importance of fiber optics for the connectivity of the islands.
Canalink is an ambitious public-private collaboration project that has allowed for a qualitative leap and connects the Canary Islands with Africa and the Peninsula via fiber optics. It is a commitment that will turn the Canary Islands into a key node of digital connectivity between three continents: Europe, Africa, and America.
Antonio Hernández, director of Canalink, explained the D-Alix project, which connects the islands of Tenerife, La Palma, and Gran Canaria with the Peninsula via a cable. Hernández explained that "Canalink is part of a larger project, ALIX, which does not only consist of an underwater cable, but also includes a data center, with more than 1,700 square meters of technical floor space and island rings of dark fiber that are already being traced". A project, he said, that will allow "the ability to be connected to the world with a competitive bandwidth that will generate an alternative economy to tourism".
Regarding the African continent, Hernández said that "in Africa today there is the lowest rate of Internet penetration, mobile telephony, etc... but GDP growth rates indicate that they will soon be demanding advanced telecommunications services".
For his part, Rafael Navarro Campoamor, responsible for the fiber optic ring of Tenerife, explained the technical issues related to the installation of the submarine and terrestrial cable. IT3, the company he represents, belonging to ITER, is a neutral telecommunications operator, which provides its services to other operators present on the island.
Scenario for a new economic model
The Chamber of Commerce points out that "growth opportunities, in the current information society, depend on telecommunications infrastructures that allow the transmission and storage of large amounts of data". In this sense, Canalink's commitment in the Islands opens up a wide range of business possibilities related to the transmission and management of information, teleworking, online services, etc...
In addition, Canalink is configured as the basis for the connection infrastructure of the university and research centers of the Canary Islands with the Red Iris Nova in the Peninsula. Likewise, "the entry of new operators will allow for an improvement in prices and service quality".
A data macro-warehouse in Tenerife: D-Alix
Linked to Canalink, D-Alix has also been built, which is a macro warehouse of information, with enormous capacity, located in the Institute of Technology and Renewable Energies (ITER), in the south of Tenerife. It is a world-class data center that will serve as a neutral aggregation and distribution point for Tri-continental traffic, as well as a southern gateway to Europe in terms of telecommunications.
The conference is part of the Knowledge Fair program, a program co-financed by the Higher Council of Chambers and the European Social Fund and which aims to bring companies into contact with knowledge centers to promote innovation.
