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The EllaLink submarine cable between South America and the European continent, through Sines, will provide Europe with “a direct and controlling infrastructure”, without depending on the United States, the president of the construction consortium told Lusa.
The six thousand kilometer long submarine telecommunications cable will connect Europe, through the port of Sines, in Portugal, with South America, through the port of Fortaleza, Brazil, with the start of commercial operation scheduled for May .
This cable “provides Europe with an infrastructure that is direct and that it controls,” giving “autonomy in the exchange of information and business that it does with other countries and continents,” said the executive president of the EllaLink consortium in an interview with Lusa. consulted about what this project brings to the European continent.
When communications go through the United States to reach South America, Europe “simply depends” on that country, which can intercept the traffic or charge for it, Philippe Dumont continued.
Investing in this submarine cable “is the first sign that Europe cares about South America,” he added.
“Second, [significa] that Europe does not want to depend on the policies of other countries where [país] very powerful are, in fact, the United States, “he said.
“For me it is a clear and precise political movement from Europe to support this initiative”, underlined Philippe Dumont.
The EllaLink company itself reflects the “European representation at the moment”, underlined the CEO, who is French, referring that its number two is Spanish, and it still has a Portuguese as head of operations, as well as Irish, among others.
In other words, a group of people working to “make infrastructure like this happen in the service of Europe,” he said.
Philippe Dumont said he expected more undersea cables like EllaLink to emerge, noting that the world has changed a lot in the last decade.
“If you look back, 10 years ago, the policies of Europe and those of the countries that went to Europe were promoted by telecommunications operators” and “it was like that 10 years ago,” continued the executive, in which there were companies from the sector. construction of submarine cables.
But now, “telecommunications operators are out of the picture, they have been replaced by Facebook and Google” and Chinese companies such as Alibaba, among others, and “Europe does not have a vector, today it does not have the means to carry out the policy of reaching others. continents or countries that are not initiatives like EllaLink ”, argued Dumont.
“That is why it is so important and that is why I hope that the rest of Europe understands it and makes sure that destiny, in terms of digital transformation, is in their hands, at least in part, and not just in the hands of mega-companies. they are doing what they want and serving “only” their best interests, “he considered.
The project of this submarine telecommunications cable, whose construction began in January 2018 and will end in May of this year, involves several alliances, among which is the Portuguese REN – Redes Energéticas Nacionais.
“We have a significant number of partners,” he said, naming Telxius, a major infrastructure operator in South America, REN, which provides a fiber network between the EllaLink cable stations and the Lisbon and Madrid stations.
“We have more specific partnership agreements with Equinix and Interxion, which are ‘data center companies,'” he added.
On expectations for the project, Philippe Dumont said he had “two challenges.”
The first, “is that we have to complete the construction of the cable and this is not minor”, so “we have tests and procedures to perform to ensure” that all transmission equipment is fully operational.
The second challenge “is the commercial launch,” but “we are very confident” in winning contracts, he said.
EllaLink is a neutral “carrier”, which means that it markets services to anyone who wants to buy them.
“We don’t have any religion or people that we don’t want to sell to,” he said.
The EllaLink project consists of a submarine cable with four pairs of fibers in its backbone, which connects Fortaleza and Sines and also to ‘data centers’ in Madrid and Lisbon through a terrestrial network. Each fiber pair can carry 18 terabits, resulting in a total system capacity of around 80 terabits.
The useful life of a submarine cable is about 25 years.
ALU // JNM
Lusa / End
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