In 2021, South America will have a state-of-the-art submarine cable with direct connection to Europe for the first time. On 12/14, Ellalink, the company that owns the cable with the same name, and ASN, manufacturer and responsible for the construction and launch of the submarine cable, announced the anchorage of the Ellalink cable at Praia do Futuro in Fortaleza. The connection between the capital of Ceará and Sines, in Portugal more than 6,000 km away, should be established in January, and the cable will be ready for use in the second quarter of 2021. 

Read the ASN interview about the operation for Géant

Watch the video of Ellalink showing the anchorage in Fortaleza

The future connection will have capacity of 72 terabits per second (Tb/s) between South America and Europe, more than 9% of which, equivalent to 4.5 Tb/s, will be dedicated to use by the research and education community on both continents during the cable service life initially estimated at 25 years.

Access to the EllaLink cable for research and education is one of the goals of project BELLA (Building the Europe Link to Latin America). The other intends to capillarize the access to Ellalink cable by means of renewal of the research and education networks within Latin America.

Among other uses, this capacity will make it possible to carry out major scientific projects between the two regions with collaboration of Brazilian researchers in European initiatives, such as the Earth Observation Copernicus Program, high energy physics projects involving LHC, particle accelerator of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and the optical and radio telescopes of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile.

According to network scientist Michael Stanton, the new connection will also substantially reduce the delay in the communication between Brazil and Europe. "Currently, all Internet traffic between Brazil and Europe has to pass through the United States, increasing the communication delay, mainly affecting delay-sensitive applications, such as the interactive ones", Stanton explains.

"Direct traffic between Brazil and Europe via the new submarine cable Ellalink will be essential for the research activities in physics and CERN", the researcher Renato Santana, from the Brazilian Physical Research Center (CBPF), stated at WRNP 2020.

Watch the panel about the big scientific projects at WRNP 2020

About BELLA project

The academic networks participating in BELLA project include the national networks of Brazil (RNP), Chile (REUNA), Colombia (RENATA) and Ecuador (CEDIA), in addition to the regional RedCLARA network in Latin America, as well as those of Germany (DFN) , Spain (Rediris), France (Renater), Italy (GARR) and Portugal (FCCN), and the regional network Géant in Europe. Investments on the European side have been supported by the European Commission, and in South America, by resources from the involved national networks and RedCLARA.

To learn more, go to: https://bella-programme.redclara.net/index.php/pt/.