EOW March 2014

News Corporate

BT awards £26.9m subsea cabling contract

Brendan Dick, director, BT Scotland, said: “Quite simply, it’s the biggest subsea engineering project BT has undertaken in UK territorial waters and is the first ever with so many seabed crossings. “The size of the task presents a massive challenge, not only because of the number of cables involved but also the fact that the work has to be completed within a single, six-month weather window. “The pressure is on but we’re confident that in just over a year’s time, the Highlands and Islands will be set to benefit from its own network of underwater, fibre optic cables.” BT – UK Website : www.bt.com FIB’s American appointment FIB Belgium, specialist in heat treatment lines and equipment for the steel wire industry, has appointed Morgan Koch to represent it in the USA and Canadian markets. Bob Strauss or Jay Diman at Morgan Koch can be contacted on +1 832 363 3799 or +1 508 793 1945.

BT has awarded three firms a £26.9 million contract for an ambitious subsea cabling project which will help deliver fast fibre broadband to the Highlands and Islands in the UK. Specialist vessels will lay 20 fibre optic submarine cables in a precise operation during May to October, providing a fibre broadband backbone which will eventually link communities from Kintyre to Orkney. The massive engineering effort is part of the £146 million investment project launched with Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) last March to bring high-speed fibre broadband to communities across the north of Scotland. Chelmsford-based Global Marine Systems will conduct detailed marine route surveys and supply the cables; Orange Marine, which is based in France but works globally, has been contracted to lay around 400 kilometres of subsea cables, while Hampshire-based A-2-Sea Solutions has been chosen to work onshore connecting the cables to BT’s terrestrial network. BT has a successful track record of working with all three companies, who were chosen from a competitive tendering process which featured several rival bids. The longest cable will run for nearly 79km under the Minch from Ullapool to Stornoway, with the Western Isles also benefitting from a second link stretching more than 57km between Carnan on South Uist, and Dunvegan on Skye.

FIB SA – Belgium Website : ww.fib.be

19

www.read-eurowire.com

March 2014