$45-million undersea pact

$45-million undersea pact

AT&T, Basking Ridge, NJ, has been awarded a $45-million contract to design, engineer, install, monitor and maintain a 1310-km undersea fiber-optic telecommunications system between the east coast of the United States and Lands End, Bermuda. The cable system will be privately owned jointly by TeleBermuda International Ltd. in Bermuda and U.S.-based TeleBermuda International L.L.C. The fiber system, called Bermuda-United States-1 (BUS-1) consists of two fiber pairs operating to 2.5 Gbits/sec, providing capacity equal to 120,000 simultaneous two-way telephone conversations. The Bermuda-U.S. portion of the system is slated for service in October 1997.