Telebras of Brazil and Islalink of Spain, have signed a EULALINK Joint Venture agreement to build a new submarine optical fibre cable between Europe and Latin America.
The subsea cable, which should be complete in early 2018, will link Lisbon (Portugal) with Fortaleza (Brazil). This initiative should bring the 2 continents closer and boost education, research and innovation as well as business exchanges.
Furthermore, it should reduce connection costs and provide many more households, organisations and companies with a very high-speed Internet connection.
According to reports, 45 percent interest in the project will be held by IslaLink, 35 percent by Telebras while a further Brazilian shareholder will put up the remainder.
The European Commission (EC) will invest around €25 million in the new fibre-optic infrastructure via the Building Europe Link to Latin America (BELLA) project.
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.