SANTIAGO, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Chile will have access to the new submarine fiber optic cable Mistral, which will stretch to Guatemala and have connection points in Peru and Ecuador later this year.
In a recent interview with Xinhua, Florencio Utreras, a researcher at the Mathematical Modeling Center of the University of Chile, explained that a submarine fiber optic cable allows light to be transmitted mainly through laser rays, which are emitted at the ends of communication devices, and which make it possible to transmit encrypted data.
Utreras, considered the "father of the Internet in Chile," explained that this cable will take data from San Jose, Guatemala, to Valparaiso in central Chile through the Pacific Ocean, with connection points in Colombia, Peru, and Arica in the north of Chile.
The Chilean Undersecretariat of Telecommunications said in a statement in May, when Mistral was launched, that it will be essential for the development of a 5G network and it will have a capacity of 132 Terabytes per second (Tbps), which will improve the connectivity of millions of people in Latin America.
Utreras explained that in the past, Internet connections were made possible through satellites, which have limited data transmission capacity compared with fiber optic cables.
"This cable between Valparaiso and Guatemala, which has a length of 7,300 kilometers, is one fifth of a single trip to a satellite," he said.
"So, when you are communicating today, you do not perceive a delay in general and it is because (the distance) is very small."
Eduardo Vera, manager of Innovation and Development at the Mathematical Modeling Center, told Xinhua that currently, submarine cables have "great strategic importance because, first, they have a very large capacity and that capacity can even be increased over time as technology increases."
"Connectivity -- I do not need to explain -- is an essential issue. It is the path of the 21st century. And, therefore, with the demand for telecommuting, distance learning, and telemedicine, the only thing it is going to do is grow," he said.
"With climate change there have been heavy rains. Sometimes landslides occur in the desert and the (land) cables have been cut. But the truth is that as long as you have an alternative circuit, the traffic can automatically be re-routed."
Mistral is a project developed jointly by the telecommunications companies Claro Chile and Telxius and is expected to start operation in the second half of this year.
