The municipalities of the island have begun to connect to the Island Fiber Optic Ring by the Cabildo de Tenerife. Specifically, 18 town halls will join the network during the months of May and June to join four other local corporations that already have access to this service. The insular president, Pedro Martín, stresses that “this is a long-awaited project by the municipalities due to the improvement it entails in the quality, capacity, availability and security of communications.” A measure that “results in an improvement in the electronic services provided to the public.”
The connections materialize through the subsidies granted by the insular area of the Presidency, Finance and Modernization, directed by Berta Pérez, to deploy this infrastructure from the entrance of the different towns to the municipal headquarters.
Pedro Martín, president of the Cabildo, emphasizes the significant cost reduction that the entry into operation of the Insular Ring entails for the municipalitiesto the extent that it favors competition and allows new private operators to offer the telecommunications service, which will result in significant savings from contracting these services.
22 of 31 connected
Four municipalities, such as Adeje, Candelaria, Fasnia and La Laguna, already have access to this service, while in another 18 municipalities, where the works have already been completed, local corporations will connect to the Fiber Optic Ring during May and June. They are Güímar, Guía de Isora, Santiago del Teide, El Tanque, Garachico, Los Silos, La Guancha, San Juan de la Rambla, Puerto de la Cruz, Santa Úrsula, La Matanza, La Victoria, El Sauzal, Tacoronte, Tegueste, El Rosario, San Miguel de Abona and Granadilla de Abona . The forecast is that during the year the rest will be added.
To facilitate their incorporation into the Fiber Optic Ring, the Cabildo has granted each council a subsidy to finance the deployment of the land line to its facilities.
investment so far has amounted to 416,623 euros in these works, within the annual municipal modernization plans promoted by the insular area since 2020, with the aim of improving the quality of public services provided in the 31 municipalities of the Island.
The next step, which will be carried out by the Insular Directorate of Innovation, contemplates the deployment of fiber optics to other buildings for public use, such as libraries, citizen services or fire stations, among others, for which the Island council already has the necessary studies.
base infrastructure
The Insular Fiber Optic Ring establishes the basic infrastructure for the development of technological projects of the Cabildo that will allow, for example, to increase security in Tenerife in matters such as the prediction and monitoring of fires forestry, natural catastrophes and even possible volcanic eruptions. Without forgetting an aspect as important as the surveillance of Tenerife’s roads.
The Insular Telecommunications Ring expands into the network through radials located on the insular roads from the TF-1 (South) and TF-5 (North) motorways. In the short term, singular and vital buildings, such as the town halls themselves, citizen service centers or fire stations, among others, will see their communication systems strengthened and both bandwidth and security will increase.
The Insular Telecommunications Ring that is deployed will be closely linked to the self-provision network that the Cabildo de Tenerife already has. The objective is to optimize the necessary extension of the optical fiber, as well as to allow the correct communication of these points of interest with the D-ALiX data center, located at the headquarters of the Technological and Renewable Energy Institute (ITER), in Granadilla de Abona. .
241 points of interest
The forecast indicates that there will be 171 points of interest that will be connected in the most recent phase with the Ring. They are distributed throughout the insular orography. They will be in total. With the development of the network, citizens will be able to access the electronic offices of public bodies more quickly and safely.
In addition, this system will allow the reduction of electricity costs, equipment maintenance, as well as technical needs at corporate headquarters. Other advantages will be to reduce the number of contracts with operators, in addition to continuing to improve and ensure the teleworking model.
The Self-service Network and the Insular Telecommunications Ring will be, in the future, the basis of any project with technological support of the Cabildo. Hence its significance.
an old aspiration
The Island Telecommunications Ring is an infrastructure promoted by the Island Corporation in 2011 and which, due to its complexity, has had to be carried out in several phases.
The objective of the project is to have a terrestrial fiber optic network that allows this service to be brought to all the municipalities of the Island, an action that will benefit those population centers that still do not have this technology. Likewise, it is also expected that this deployment will also favor the citizens of Tenerife can access more affordable prices for this service, by allowing various private operators to offer it and therefore favor competition.
In this way, like other infrastructures managed by the Telecommunications Technological Institute of Tenerife, it will be available in a neutral, transparent and non-discriminatory manner to all telecommunications operators that wish to provide their services on the Island. In addition, the Insular Ring of Telecommunications will foster the connection of all the island headquarters and the local corporations of Tenerife, which will make it possible to increase efficiency in public management.
128 kilometers of cable to connect
A main perimeter ring will connect with all the municipalities of the Island that already have a fiber optic ring. It runs along the TF-1 and the TF-5. There will be 128 kilometers of cable, of which 81.5 will be located inside a trench dug through a special telecommunications conduit; the rest will be installed in existing pipelines. Surveillance cameras, information panels and signaling porticos will also be placed. These works have been carried out in phases with the progress of the Self-Provision Network carried out by the Innovation area, directed by Enrique Arriaga. With the closure of the island ring, fiber optics will reach the 31 municipalities and telecommunications in administrations and infrastructures will improve, with the reinforcement of the systems and communications of the so-called points of interest of the public sector, improvement of the speed and security of the connections. | JDM