InterGlobix Magazine Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Jasmine Bedi, spoke to both Gabriel Holgado and Jaime Goldenberg to understand more about TAFS products and services, including network and data center connectivity. The two leaders also shed light on how TAM-1 supports customers in scaling and how TAFS embeds security, redundancy, and resilience into both their physical infrastructure and the services they offer.
TAM-1 was designed to replace aging regional infrastructure while introducing significantly greater capacity and route diversity. From a network strategy perspective, what differentiates TAM-1 from legacy systems currently serving Central America and the Caribbean?
[GH] I think you need to think about the evolution of subsea in the Americas as a story of different areas and timelines. Basically each area was optimized for the design of the Internet at that moment, and those cables were designed for an Internet that is no longer the current situation. The first generation of systems was engineered for an era in which the first iPhone was not yet launched and Netflix (or any video streaming platform) didn’t exist. For some CTOs, the word “cloud” had a completely different meaning than the one widely used today. So, whether due to capacity requirements or performance standards, those first-generation systems are nearing the end of life. If you dig into the second stage of build outs in the region, those systems were focused on improving internal Caribbean connectivity, which was really meaningful for those islands at that moment. Then there was a third generation around 2013 to 2015 that furthered regional literature around capacity availability—though the important distinction there is that most of those cables were purpose-built for specific operators, specific routes, and specific commercial architectures. In other words, they aren’t neutral, they aren’t open access, and they are primarily for their owners.
