wiredinUSA April 2012

INDEX

Copper shortfall ?

First submarine cable between US and Brazil

Reuters reports that the chief financial officer of Peru’s Southern Copper is predicting global supply of copper will fall short of demand until the second half of 2013 as environmental and financing difficulties delay new production plants. Project delays and unexpected production halts havemaintained a five-year copper supply deficit of between 300,000 and 400,000 tonnes a year, or about 3 percent of the world’s production. There may a similar gap this year, despite an expected economic slowdown in China, said Raul Jacob, CFO of Southern Copper, Peru’s largest producer of the metal. “Eventually, supply will catch up with demand at some point

in the second half of 2013,” Jacob told Reuters after talking to investors at the New York Stock Exchange. News that China, which consumes about 40 percent of the world’s copper production, was cutting its 2012 growth target to an eight-year low of 7.5 percent was only a “relative concern” for Southern Copper. “The 7.5 percent growth in China’s GDP will eventually convert into (growth of) 10 percent or higher in copper demand,” Jacob forecasts, adding that China bought “a lot of copper” in 2009, when the global economy plunged into recession following the collapse of financial markets.

Seaborn Networks LLC will deploy Seabras-1, the first submarine cable system to provide a direct route between the United States and São Paulo, Brazil - the primary route for the majority of Internet, data and voice traffic between South America and the rest of the world. At current rates of growth, existing submarine cables between the US and Brazil will not provide adequate capacity beyond 2016, even after taking into account potential capacity upgrades with new technology. In addition, these

aging systems will have less than half of their engineering design life remaining when Seabras-1 is deployed. Seabras-1 will be a 32 Tbps system connecting Miami and São Paulo, with a branch that lands in Fortaleza, Brazil. Activation is scheduled for 2014. Previous submarine systems designed, built and operated by Seaborn’s workforce include 75 landing stations, 250 points of presence and 250,000km of submarine cable (more than six times the circumference of the Earth).

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wiredInUSA - April 2012

wiredInUSA - April 2012

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