wiredinUSA March 2014

INDEX

MAKING THENEWS

Undersea to Europe The Brazilian government is anticipating that a future undersea fiber optic telecommunication link with Europe will increase security and reduce consumers’ internet costs. Construction of the submarine cable will begin in July, under a joint venture led by Brazil's Telebras and Spain's IslaLink Submarine Cables. The project is expected to cost $185m. "This new submarine cable provides a direct connection to the European continent, decreasing latency. It is expected that this will result in cost reductions," the coordinator of the submarine cabling project at Telebras, Ronald Valladão, told Deutsche Welle Brazil, adding that the savings to consumers could be as much as 15 percent.

Currently there is one aging and limited cable connecting Brazil to Europe, Atlantis II, almost exclusively used as a telephony link. Four submarine cables connect Brazil to the United States. The new cable will link Portugal to the city of Fortaleza in the northeast of Brazil. The project was announced following reports that the National Security Agency in the United States had been spying on Brazil's telecommunications - the plan is to build links to carry Internet traffic between South America and Europe, bypassing the US. Telebras maintains that the motivation for the undersea link was economic, with the added bonus of security, stressing that the cable project would have been built regardless of the NSA spying revelations.

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wiredInUSA - March 2014