Brazil-Uruguay-Argentina submarine cable goes live

Telxius, the infrastructure subsidiary of the Telefónica group, has announced the full activation of the Tannat fiber cable, which connects Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil by sea.

The cable is a partnership between Telxius, Google and Uruguayan public telco Antel.

A first route connecting Maldonado in Uruguay to Santos/Praia Grande in Brazil was deployed in 2018, while a landing point in Las Toninas, Argentina, which was planned from the beginning, was only authorized by Argentine regulator Enacom in July last year.

Now, the 2,000km system is open for business and adds to Telxius’ Brusa (Virginia Beach in the US to Rio de Janeiro) and Junior (Rio de Janeiro-Santos, also co-owned by Google) cables on the Atlantic coast to deliver end-to-end connectivity between the US, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina.

“With these three new generation systems, adding redundancy to the company’s existing SAM-1, Telxius is providing essential infrastructure that powers Latin America to meet the needs of enterprises and people alike and enables the region to fully participate in today’s global digital economy,” Telxius said in a release.

Launched in 2001, SAM-1 is a 25,000km cable ring surrounding Latin America with 16 landing points, as well as in Florida.  

Activated in 2018, Brusa has a capacity of 160Tbps, reportedly the highest direct connection capacity between the US and South America and one of the highest in the world. 

It connects Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza in Brazil, San Juan in Puerto Rico and Virginia Beach, US via an 11,000km route.

The Virginia Beach landing station also allows the system to link to the Marea and Dunant cables connecting the US to Europe, “creating a global loop that connects South America, the US, Europe and beyond,” said Telxius.

Nonetheless, a new cable system – EllaLink – connecting Brazil directly to Europe without going through the US, is expected to provide much lower latency between South America and Europe than Telxius' cable.

The cable runs for 6,000km and landing sites in Fortaleza (Brazil) and Sines (Portugal) are ready. In the future, there will also be landing points in Praia Grande in Brazil's São Paulo state and in Rio de Janeiro.

EllaLink's deployment is complete and the cable is receiving the finishing touches before going into service, which could take place in the coming weeks. 

SPSC

Telxius is also investing on the Pacific coast of Latin America.

The company is deploying the South Pacific Submarine Cable (SPSC), a system jointly developed with América Móvil, which will run 7,300km from Puerto San José in Guatemala to Valparaíso in Chile.

The system has landing points in Salinas (Ecuador) Lurín (Peru) and Arica (Chile) and has already arrived in Peru. It is expected to be ready for service in June. 

The initial expectation was that SPSC would be ready to operate by the end of 2020.