• On 17 March 2026, the MANTA consortium—Liberty Networks, Gold Data and Sparkle—selected MDC Data Centers to design, build and operate neutral Cable Landing Hubs in Cancún and Veracruz.
  • MANTA is a cable system, not a company. The two hubs and the cable are not yet in service; public schedules range from hub delivery in summer 2027 to system operation in late 2027 or early 2028, while Gold Data cites a 2028 ready-for-service target.

What the March agreement actually covers

The agreement gives MDC responsibility for two Mexican coastal facilities. Each is intended to combine a cable landing station with a carrier-neutral data-centre and interconnection environment, so subsea capacity can meet domestic and cross-border terrestrial networks without a single carrier controlling access.

The sites are planned for Cancún and Veracruz. Their modular design can expand in 1 MW increments to 5 MW per site. That number is a design ceiling for future power and interconnection demand, not evidence that either facility currently has 5 MW installed, commissioned or occupied.

The cable, the hubs and the operators are different layers

Liberty Networks, Gold Data and Sparkle are the consortium behind MANTA. A contract that entered into force on 17 March 2025 assigns SubCom the cable’s design, manufacture and installation. MDC’s later mandate concerns the two Mexican landing hubs; it does not make MDC the cable owner or turn MANTA into a corporate actor.

The operating split also matters. All three consortium members are due to access the northern USA–Mexico portion, while Sparkle joins Liberty Networks on the southern portion serving Panama and Colombia. Shore ends, terrestrial backhaul, neutral colocation and customer circuits must still work together before an announced route becomes an operational service.

Design figures do not establish delivered capacity

Public documents describe MANTA as roughly 5,400–5,600 km because different consortium materials use different estimates. The 2025 implementation contract specifies an up-to-18-fibre-pair repeatered trunk and support for up to 22 Tb/s per fibre pair, linking San Blas and North Miami in Florida with Veracruz and Cancún in Mexico, María Chiquita in Panama and Cartagena in Colombia, plus a future-facing Cayman branching unit.

Those are route and equipment specifications. Delivered capacity requires manufactured and laid cable, powered landing equipment, completed terrestrial paths, permits, testing, acceptance and commercial activation. The Cable & Wireless Communications annual report says approvals were still expected and places operation in late 2027 or early 2028; a later Gold Data update uses a 2028 target.

What neutral landing hubs could change

Open interconnection in Cancún and Veracruz could give carriers, cloud providers and content networks more choices for reaching Mexico City and Querétaro and for routing between the United States, Mexico, Panama and Colombia. The mechanism is route diversity plus easier handoff between subsea and terrestrial networks—not a generic promise that every connection will become faster or more resilient.

The outcome test is operational: when each hub is commissioned, which carriers connect, which backhaul routes are available, how traffic is distributed, what latency is measured, and whether a fault can actually be bypassed. Until those data exist, lower latency and resilience remain consortium design claims rather than observed service performance.

What to watch

  • Mexican and US permits, shore-end works, marine installation and system acceptance.
  • MDC construction milestones for the Cancún and Veracruz hubs.
  • Installed power and commissioned capacity versus the 5 MW per site expansion design.
  • SubCom manufacturing, cable-lay and test completion.
  • A reconciled ready-for-service date across consortium members.
  • Named carriers, terrestrial backhaul, measured latency, traffic and failover results.

Sources