Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS)

Overview

The Suriname-Guyana Submarine Cable System (SG-SCS) is a regional submarine cable spanning approximately 1,249 kilometres along the northeastern coast of South America and into the southern Caribbean. It connects Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, serving a corridor that links two continental South American nations with a Caribbean island state.

Route and Landings

In Guyana, the cable lands at Georgetown, the country's capital on the Atlantic coast. In Suriname, the landing point is Totness, a town on the country's northwestern coast. In Trinidad and Tobago, the cable lands at Chaguaramas, situated on the northwestern peninsula of Trinidad.

Ownership and Operators

The SG-SCS is jointly owned by Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) and Telesur, the state-owned telecommunications operator of Suriname. GT&T is Guyana's principal fixed-line telecommunications provider, while Telesur fulfils a comparable role in Suriname. This bilateral ownership structure reflects the cable's function as a direct link between the two operators' respective national networks, extended onward to Trinidad and Tobago.

Status and Timeline

The SG-SCS became ready for service in 2010 and currently operates as an active submarine cable system connecting its three landing points.

Regional Context

The SG-SCS operates within a corridor that includes several other submarine cable systems. The Southern Caribbean Fiber, ready for service in 2006, and the EC Link, ready in 2007, both serve Trinidad and Tobago, as does the Eastern Caribbean Fiber System (ECFS), which entered service in 1995. The more recently completed Deep Blue One, ready for service in 2024, shares the same three-country corridor of Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago, making it the most direct peer to the SG-SCS in geographic terms. The SG-SCS thus predates Deep Blue One by approximately 14 years in serving this specific route.

Measured round-trip latency across the SG-SCS averages 109.7 milliseconds over recent tests, with a best recorded figure of 98.0 milliseconds, consistent with the cable's 1,249-kilometre length across this coastal corridor.

Strategic Role

The SG-SCS provides submarine connectivity between two South American nations — Guyana and Suriname — and the Caribbean hub of Trinidad and Tobago. By linking Georgetown and Totness to Chaguaramas, the cable supports international communications capacity for both GT&T and Telesur, connecting their networks to a broader Caribbean transit point. The 1,249-kilometre system represents a direct infrastructure relationship between operators in countries that share a closely connected geographic and economic region.