Planned new submarine cable between Europe and Latin America

The submarine optical fibre cable between Europe and Latin America will link Lisbon (Portugal) with Fortaleza (Brazil). This initiative will bring the 2 continents closer and boost education, research and innovation as well as business exchanges. It should reduce connection costs and provide many
more households, organisations and companies with a very high-speed Internet connection. A EULALINK Joint Venture agreement between the two consortium partners, Telebras of Brazil and Islalink of Spain, has just been signed.

The European Commission will support a group of public actors gathered in the consortium BELLA (Building European Link to Latin America) who can take advantage of the new capabilities offered by the future cable. The goals are to improve the interconnection of the regional research and education networks of Europe and Latin-America and the intra-regional academic connectivity in Latin-America, in order to achieve policy objectives related to international cooperation and regional development, e-infrastructure, security and space.

BELLA is composed of 12 European and Latin American Research and Education Networks: RedCLARA (the Latin American regional network), GEANT (the European regional network), and the networks from Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Germany. BELLA will count on the support of several European and Latin American public actors, and the expected contribution of the European Commission is around 26 m€.