CASE STUDY
A CLOSER LOOK: GLOBAL CR
Even as his
PAUL BETTS IS KNOWN FOR A LOT
OF THINGS. He’s an experienced project manager, an undersea cable expert and a guy who has
absolutely no qualms about overseeing billion-dollar,
multiyear megaprojects around the world.
The London, England-based senior project
manager at telecom provider Global Crossing has
forged a reputation as someone who understands
the technical, cultural and strategic demands of
managing major installation projects.
He’s also known as one cool customer.
THE COSTA RICA CONNECTION
That experience, charisma and nearly unflappable
demeanor made Mr. Betts a natural choice for a
high-stakes project to link Costa Rica via undersea
fiber-optic cable to Global Crossing’s Pan-American Crossing (PAC). What the company has
proclaimed the busiest cable network in the region,
PAC covers the U.S. West Coast, Mexico, Panama,
Venezuela and the Virgin Islands. But PAC had
bypassed Costa Rica, leaving it reliant on two networks that both resided on the Caribbean side of
the country. And one of the networks had already
suffered damage from an anchor.
“If the other cable got damaged, it would take the
entire country offline,” Mr. Betts says. “They would
only have satellite connections.”
And indeed, on more than one occasion the entire
country had lost connectivity for days at a time.
“The country needed diversity, and tapping into
PAC on the Pacific side gave them that,” he explains.
Working with the Costa Rican government,
Global Crossing was commissioned to take on the
project. With Mr. Betts serving as subsea leader,
the project kicked off in May 2006 and was scheduled to go live in July 2008.
“I had a lot of confidence in Paul when we put him
in charge of this project,” says James Watts, vice
president, sustaining engineering for Global Crossing,
Rochester, New York, USA. “I knew his history, and I
knew this would be [easy] for him.”
