EllaLink is an optical submarine cable linking the

European European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to: In general * ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe ** Ethnic groups in Europe ** Demographics of Europe ** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...

and

South American South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

continents with landing points in

Sines Sines () is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The municipality, divided into two parishes, has around 14,214 inhabitants (2021) in an area of . Sines holds an important oil refinery and several petrochemical industries. It is also a popular ...

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

and

Fortaleza Fortaleza (, locally , Portuguese for ''Fortress'') is the state capital of Ceará, located in Northeastern Brazil. It belongs to the Metropolitan mesoregion of Fortaleza and microregion of Fortaleza. It is Brazil's 5th largest city and the t ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It has currently the lowest latency (<60 ms

round-trip delay time In telecommunications, round-trip delay (RTD) or round-trip time (RTT) is the amount of time it takes for a signal to be sent ''plus'' the amount of time it takes for acknowledgement of that signal having been received. This time delay includes p ...

between Portugal and Brazil) on the market. For more than 20 years there was no practical direct data transfer routes between Europe and South America. The only cable linking the two continents was Atlantis-2, which was not used for

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

data transfer due to its limited capacity. One of the project's main goals was to circumvent the United States and its

upstream collection Upstream collection is a term used by the National Security Agency (NSA) of the United States for intercepting telephone and Internet traffic from the Internet backbone, meaning major Internet cables and switches, both domestic and foreign. Beside ...

as the route connects Europe directly with South America; this man-in-the-middle position gave the US

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

the ability to spy on European and South American communications. It was judged problematic by interested parties to EllaLink. In that regard, then President of Brazil

Dilma Rousseff Dilma Vana Rousseff (; born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil, holding the position from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She is the first w ...

said in 2014 that EllaLink would be central to "ensure the neutrality" of the Internet, showing her wish to block Brazilian Internet traffic from being accessed for United States government activities. The cable was launched 1 June 2021, providing a direct data route between Portugal and Brazil.

Awards

EllaLink has received a Global Carrier Award in the category "Best Subsea Project of the Year".

History

EllaLink was formed in 2012. The project began in 2015. In 2017, the supply contract was awarded to Alcatel Submarine Networks. The equity provider Marguerite became the sponsor in 2018. Cable manufacture began in 2019; the installation of the cable started in December 2020. Two vessels (Ile de Brehat and Ile de Sein) were used to lay down the cable and its branching units. The installation of the cable was finished on 28 February 2021. The vessel Ile de Sein laid down the last universal cable joint linking together the Brazilian branch left by Ile de Brehat on 1 February 2021 and the European branch.

References

External links

EllaLink Website

Submarine Cable Map
{{Submarine communications cables in the Atlantic Ocean Transatlantic communications cables Submarine communications cables in the Atlantic Ocean Submarine communications cables in the North Atlantic Ocean Submarine communications cables in the South Atlantic Ocean Internet in Europe Internet in South America 2021 establishments in Portugal 2021 establishments in Brazil 2021 establishments in Cape Verde