The Alternativa Bolivariana para los Pueblos de nuestra América (ALBA-1) is a 1860 km submarine cable linking Cuba, Jamaica and Venezuela.

The ALBA-1 cable system is the first subsea cable connecting Cuba to the outside world. 

The ALBA-1 cable project was first announced in January 2007, and completed in August 2012, activated with traffic in January 2013.

The ALBA-1 cable system is owned and operated by Venezuelan/Cuban joint venture Telecomunicaciones Gran Caribe (TGC). TGC is 60% owned by state-run Telecom Venezuela with the remainder held by Cuba’s Telco Transbit.

The ALBA-1 cable lands at:

• Siboney beach, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba
• La Guaira, Caracas, Venezuela
• Ocho Rios,  Jamaica

The ALBA-1 cable system has a design capacity of 5.12 Tbps.

Alcatel-Lucent, through its Chinese subsidiary Alcatel-Lucent Shanghai Bell, was awarded the contract to provide turn-key solution for the construction of the ALBA-1 cable system, with a final cost of US$70 million. The initial cost estimate, from October 2006, was $55 million: $35 million for the undersea portion and $20 million to extend the cable to the Cuban and Venezuelan networks in Havana and Caracas.

The ALBA-1 cable system is currenlty the only one commerical international cable system connecting Cuba to the world. Beside, there are GTMO-1 and  GTMO-PR submarine cable systems landing at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, not available for commercial use. And the ARCOS-1 Cuba Extension is still pending.