Construction of new submarine fiber optic cable will bring Europe and Latin America closer together

The green light has been given for the construction of a submarine fiber optic cable for data transmission that will directly connect Europe and Latin America. This intercontinental cable, named EllaLink, will connect the ground stations of Sines, in Portugal, and Fortaleza, in Brazil. With the final agreement between EllaLink and Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), construction is expected to begin in early 2019.

The announcement was made by GÉANT and RedCLARA, which, on behalf of the BELLA Consortium (Building the Europe Link to Latin America) — of which FCT is a part — communicated the formalization of the agreement between EllaLink and Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) for the construction of the submarine cable that will connect Europe and Latin America. Through the BELLA project, transmission capacity was acquired on the new submarine cable, which will enable high capacities for exchanging internet traffic for research and education between the two continents, with a data transmission speed of 100Gbs/second, ten times faster than the current speed.

The first phase of the work involves analyzing the ocean floor to define the route of the submarine cable and manufacturing the necessary materials. The first data transmission via the new cable is scheduled for the end of 2020.

EllaLink will be implemented within the scope of the BELLA project (Building European Link to Latin America) by a consortium of which FCT is a part, through its National Scientific Computing Unit – the Portuguese National Education and Research Network. The cable, which is almost 10,000 km long, will meet the transatlantic sharing and collaboration needs of the research and teaching communities of Europe and Latin America for the next 25 years.