Brazil is to detach its internet connection with U.S., Telebras CEO Jorge Bittar said. A submarine cable with over 30 tbps will be installed from Lisbon to Fortaleza. This would boost Internet speed with Europe in 2017.
Telebras, the Brazilian telecommunications company will provide the country's first submarine cable. This means Brazil is about to host global data centers and would be independent from U.S. in connecting hubs.
A report from Reuters said the submarine cable has a capacity of 30 terabytes per second. Research companies in Europe will invest €28M to access one-sixth of the cable's high-speed capacity for 25 years. It would give them an access to the European Southern Observatory telescopes in the Atacama Desert in Chile.
"The submarine cable will give us greater security and more agile communications with Europe," Jorge Bittar, the CEO of Telebras said in the interview.
Correspondingly, Arianespace, a space transporter in French Guiana would launch the geostationary satellite. It has a throughput of 56 gigabyte-per-second.
Likewise, the connectivity corresponds to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's aim to offer internet access to each Brazilian school in the country. Brazilian government had already paid half of its cost which amounts to $654M. They are currently building antennas to connect to suburbs and remote areas in Brazil.
For $185M, Telebras teamed up with Spain's IslaLink to install the 3,650-mile submarine cable from Lisbon to Fortaleza. According to Cypress, the joint venture was signed in July. It's been a three-year negotiation after Telebras finally came up with the decision.
The Brazilian telecom opts Thales SA, a French aerospace service, over a U.S. company to provide the system. Bittar said the spying scandal prompted them to isolate from the U.S.
In 2013, Edward Snowden, a whistleblower from NSA revealed in a statement from The Guardian that the U.S. government through NSA has built a global surveillance system. He divulged NSA has been spying about 5 billion times a day to people around the world including residents in Brazil.
The cable will grant sufficient bandwidth to host video operations like Netflix and YouTube. The Brazilian Armed Forces expects to have an access to the satellite as well. But most importantly, Brazil would be restricted from NSA secret surveillance.
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