Huawei Technologies Co Ltd said it was “very actively” interested in building the first undersea fiber-optic cable between South America and Asia. fiber-optic cable between South America and Asia

David Dou Yong, Huawei’s chief executive in Chile, told Reuters the company was eagerly following the public tender process initiated by Chile in July and would participate when bids were invited for the trans-Pacific construction.

“Huawei will be very actively participating in this business opportunity,” he said in an interview.

“This bidding process has several steps … We are ready and we will follow the process until the bid to select a vendor to implement it starts and for sure we will be part of the tender process.”

His comments came two months after another Chinese telecoms firm, Hengtong Optic-Electric Co Ltd, said in a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange that it had signed a letter of intent with Huawei to buy its 51% stake in Huawei Marine Systems Co Ltd, the company’s submarine cable business, via cash and share issuance.

On Wednesday, Huawei launched a data center with locally hosted cloud storage services in Santiago, an investment of more than $100 million.

Huawei has lobbied the Chilean government to store its data in the cloud.

Dou Yong told Reuters that there were no agreements in place with the government yet but that Huawei would keep pressing for state business.

“We look on Chile as the benchmark for the whole of Latin America,” he said.

Existing submarine cable systems fiber-optic cable between South America and Asia

Several submarine cable systems connect South America to other regions of the world, such as North America and Europe, which can serve as intermediate points for data transmission between South America and Asia.

One of the main submarine cable systems that connects South America to other regions is the South American Crossing (SAC) cable system, which connects Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Other submarine cable systems that connect South America to other regions include the Americas-II (AM-II) and the Pan-American Crossing (PAC) cable systems.

In terms of plans for new submarine cable systems that could potentially connect South America to Asia, there have been some discussions in recent years. For example, in 2018, the Brazilian government announced plans to build a new submarine cable system that would connect Brazil to East Asia, passing through South Africa and Mauritius.