The Bell System Technical Journal 



April, 1932 



A New Key West — Havana Carrier Telephone Cable * 



H. A. AFFEL, W. S. GORTON and R. W. CHESNUT 



A new submarine cable has recently been laid between Key West and 

 Havana in order to furnish more telephone facilities between the United 

 States and Cuba. The cable has a single central conductor with concentric 

 tape return and employs the newly developed material paragutta for insu- 

 lation. A carrier telephone system provides three telephone channels. 

 As ultimately developed a still greater number of facilities may be made 

 available over the cable. 



TN January 1931, telephone service was inaugurated over a new 

 -^ submarine cable to Cuba, spanning the hundred-mile or more 

 stretch of deep water between Key West and Havana. Telephone 

 service to Cuba dates back about 10 years earlier when three con- 

 tinuously loaded cables were laid between Key West and Havana. 

 These cables and their associated terminal apparatus were completely 

 described in a paper ^ by Martin, Anderegg, and Kendall, presented to 

 the Institute at its midwinter convention in 1922. The new cable, 

 like the earlier ones, is owned by the Cuban-American Telephone and 

 Telegraph Company, an organization controlled jointly by the Amer- 

 ican Telephone and Telegraph Company and the Cuban Telephone 

 Company for the purpose of providing telephone facilities between the 

 United States and Cuba. 



In the past decade the communication art has advanced in many 

 respects so that three telephone circuits are provided by carrier oper- 

 ation, using high frequencies, over this single improved type cable 

 which is not much larger than one of the three earlier cables. 



The three telephone channels now made available are connected to 

 carrier telephone channels operating on open-wire lines northward to 

 Washington and thence over four-wire cable circuits to New York 

 where they terminate as New York-Havana circuits. The telephone 

 circuits derived from the three older cables now terminate at Miami 

 or Key West, where they may be switched to other distant points. 



The new cable was designed to satisfy economically the initial need 



* Presented at A. I. E. E. Midwinter Convention, Jan. 25-29, 1932, New York, 

 N. Y. 



^ "Key West — -Havana Submarine Telephone Cable System," A. I. E E. Trans., 

 Vol. 41, p. 1, 1922. 



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