“Tenerife connects, more than ever, the Canary Islands with the world”, highlighted yesterday, in statements to DIARIO DE AVISOS, the president of the Cabildo, Pedro Martín, when announcing that Canalink, an insular public company of the group of the Technological Institute of Renewable Energies (ITER ), has been awarded European funds amounting to 23.4 million euros for the deployment of a submarine cable with the islands of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura and Lanzarote, as well as for carrying out a study for new cables in the Archipelago.
“Today we are launching a project that has been the best valued in Spain and involves not only a connection to the sister province, but also means expanding Tenerife’s ability to lead a very powerful digital platform with Africa, Europe and, above all, in Canary Islands”, emphasized the insular president.
Of the total initiatives awarded by the European Union (EU) this past Monday, Canalink will be the one that carries out the largest projects, concentrating 23.4 million of the total 39 million awarded.
“This is very important news. It is a project in which we have been investing since the beginning of the mandate. With this new project, Tenerife has managed to connect the Canary Islands with the world from a digital and telecommunications point of view”, the island president emphasized in this regard.
Likewise, Pedro Martín explained that this project “also means strengthening a company like Canalink, which already provides services to companies like MásMóvil and Orange, and African companies like Maroc Telecom, the most important in Morocco.” In this sense, he explained that a state-of-the-art submarine cable will be introduced, with an estimated useful life of three decades.
three jumps
The president recalled that “we started from the first connections between Tenerife and Gran Canaria, Africa and Europe; we took a second leap to connect from Gran Canaria, with a cable, with Europe; and now we are going to take a third leap, thanks to this European financing, which is going to cover a good part of the investment, which is going to add to the connection between Tenerife and Gran Canaria, new links with Lanzarote and Fuerteventura”.
In this third step, a little more than 34 million will be invested, of which the EU contributes these 23.4 million and the Cabildo, through Canalink, will provide the remaining 11 million, although it is estimated that Canalink can obtain annual benefits of between 5 o 6 million euros thanks to the deployment of the new submarine cable and the entry of new companies that hire their services.
After having signed the grant last Monday, the competition and bidding processes will now begin and the execution period for the new submarine cable is 46 months, with a limit until the end of 2026 to start this project. Pedro Martín commented that the next “leap” will be to unite La Gomera and El Hierro, islands that are currently not part of this system due to a lack of a critical mass of customers. “Our main economic resource is tourism, without a doubt, and it will continue to be so, but this Cabildo also aspires to put a small territory like Tenerife in a situation of hyperconnectivity to continue attracting resources and talent to the Islands. We are the tenth destination for digital nomads, so this project reinforces our capacity to host technology companies”, the island president assessed.
In short, “this is very important news that will allow us to promote digitization and the technology sector in Tenerife. We are the first island certified as a Smart Tourist Destination, so this is a fundamental step to multiply our connection capacity and offer technological platforms to the world”, concluded Pedro Martín.
As recalled in the Cabildo, since 2010 Canalink has been operating a network of submarine fiber optic cables that connects Tenerife with the Iberian Peninsula and with the islands of Gran Canaria and La Palma, with the aim of promoting competition in the telecommunications sector and lower the cost of said services to the final consumer.
European funds will now allow this experience and infrastructure to be exported to connect the islands of Gran Canaria, Lanzarote and Fuerteventura, thus weaving a network that already includes five islands of the Archipelago, Africa and the European continent.
ITER
On the other hand, the Cabildo also informed yesterday that Pedro Martín has informed that, since last November, he has assumed the management of the entities dependent on ITER, which become part of the Presidency area, given the strategic nature of the projects that in terms of renewable energies and technologies are being promoted, according to the agreement reached between the PSOE and Cs groups.
They recalled that Pedro Martín has chaired both ITER and its dependent entities since the beginning of the mandate, in 2019, so this agreement does not imply, in practice, significant changes for these public companies dependent on the Cabildo.
