In July 2025, our Latin America Business Manager completed a tour of Central America and the Caribbean with one clear purpose: to identify how Salience can help governments sustain — and scale — their competitiveness in the new data economy. The meetings highlighted two unavoidable fronts: the urgent replacement of submarine cables that have exhausted their design life, and the need to deploy Tier 3/4 data centres powered by renewable energy, capable of processing locally the tsunami of traffic generated by artificial intelligence.
Beneath the sea, the region still depends on systems that are nearing thirty years of service. ANTILLAS‑1 (RFS 1997) links the Dominican Republic with Puerto Rico; ARCOS‑1 (RFS 2001) encircles the Caribbean in a ring; and SAm‑1(RFS 2000) connects Florida with South America via Boca Raton and several islands. Every hurricane season or accidental anchoring raises the probability of outages and, by extension, the risk of disruption for cloud, banking, tele‑medicine services and all other services.
The timing, however, is favourable for a leap forward. The Latin American data‑centre construction market is forecasted to reach USD 4.4 billion by 2030, with an 18.6 % CAGR driven by AI workloads and edge deployments. Energy economics reinforce the case: according to OLADE, 79 % of all new electric capacity added in Latin America & the Caribbean in 2024 came from renewables, enabling solar‑plus‑battery PPAs below USD 0.10 kWh.
In Santo Domingo we held a strategic dialogue with Julissa Cruz, executive director of INDOTEL, widely recognised as a regional “Connectivity Ambassador” and the architect of the award‑winning Dominican digital‑transformation agenda. She reported impressive milestones: the country has reached 74 % effective 5G penetration and 97 % national mobile broadband coverage, with the goal of reaching 100 % of municipal capitals by 2026. The rollout towards district municipalities is already two‑thirds through its backbone phase, while residential fixed‑internet penetration is close to 58 %. These achievements rely on a robust public–private partnership (PPP) model now expanding to spectrum, cables and edge data centres.
Central America is following a similar trajectory. El Salvador inaugurated the DataTrust Data Center in Ciudad Arce in 2024 — the country’s first Uptime Institute Tier III campus — and is advancing with CAF financing for its first high‑capacity submarine cable, linking its coast to the hemisphere’s major traffic nodes. The combination of new fibre and in‑country processing will reduce latency, lower international transport costs and anchor added value within the Isthmus.
Several other CA&C markets are also pressing ahead with digital‑infrastructure upgrades. Puerto Rico is implementing submarine cable resilience programs and diversifying its connectivity infrastructure to strengthen regional links. Costa Rica has been expanding its landing station capacity and improving cross-regional connectivity paths. Jamaica is investing in data center upgrades and national broadband infrastructure through public-private partnerships to extend fiber networks. Meanwhile, Trinidad & Tobago is developing advanced data center facilities designed to enhance regional cloud services and serve as connectivity hubs for neighboring Caribbean islands. Together, these initiatives signal a broader CA&C commitment to closing capacity gaps and localizing high‑value workloads across the entire sub‑region.
How Salience can help
- From regulatory planning and PPP frameworks to detailed engineering and financial structuring (green bonds, blended multilateral finance), Salience Consulting brings the global expertise required to:
○ Design regional rings with neutral “hub” landing stations.
○ Structure contracts for Tier 3-4 campuses with 15‑ to 20‑year renewable‑energy contracts.
○ Develop national roadmaps integrating backbone, datacenters, cybersecurity, talent pipelines and open wholesale markets.
If your country or operator aims to convert the obsolescence risk of legacy cables into a sustainable competitive advantage, Salience stands ready to collaborate. The next wave of digital prosperity in the Caribbean and Central America will depend on the decisions we make — together — today.