Brazil has both modern technologies in the center-south portion, counting with LTE, 3G HSPA, DSL ISDB based Digital TV. Other areas of the country, particularly the North and Northeast regions, lack even basic analog PSTN telephone lines. This is a problem that the government is trying to solve by linking the liberation of new technologies such as WiMax and FTTH) only tied with compromises on extension of the service to less populated regions.
TAT-8 was the 8th transatlantic communications cable and first transatlantic fiber-optic cable, carrying 280 Mbit/s between the United States, United Kingdom and France. It was constructed in 1988 by a consortium of companies led by AT&T Corporation, France Télécom, and British Telecom. AT&T Bell Laboratories developed the technologies used in the cable. The system was made possible by opto-electric-opto regenerators acting as repeaters with advantages over the electrical repeaters of former cables. They were less costly and could be at greater spacing with less need for associated hardware and software. It was able to serve the three countries with a single transatlantic crossing with the use of an innovative branching unit located underwater on the continental shelf off the coast of Great Britain. The cable lands in Tuckerton, New Jersey, USA, Widemouth Bay, England, UK, and Penmarch, France.
Columbus-III was a transatlantic telecommunications cable connecting Europe to North America.
SAT-3/WASC or South Atlantic 3/West Africa Submarine Cable is a submarine communications cable linking Portugal and Spain to South Africa, with connections to several West African countries along the route.
Embratel is a major Brazilian telecommunications company headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. The company was the long distance arm of Telebras until it was bought by the U.S. company MCI Communications for 2.65 billion reais during the 1998 break-up of Telebras. However, MCI Communications went bankrupt in 2003. Since 2003, it is owned by América Móvil, the Mexican telecommunications giant.
AMERICAS-II is a fiber optic submarine communications cable that carries telecommunications between Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Martinique, Curaçao, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela, French Guiana, Suriname and Guyana, and Brazil. It has been in service since August 2000 and is operated on a common carrier basis.
South East Asia–Middle East–Western Europe 4 is an optical fibre submarine communications cable system that carries telecommunications between Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Italy, Tunisia, Algeria and France. It is intended to be a complement to, rather than a replacement for, the SEA-ME-WE 3 cable.
SAm-1 is an optical submarine communications cable. It started operations in 2000, connecting the United States, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Guatemala. In 2007, SAm-1 was extended to reach Ecuador and Colombia.
The Internet in South Africa, one of the most technologically resourced countries on the African continent, is expanding. The internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .za is managed and regulated by the .za Domain Name Authority (.ZADNA) and was granted to South Africa by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1990. Over 60% of Internet traffic generated on the African continent originates from South Africa. As of 2020, 41.5 million people were Internet users.
The Main One Cable is a submarine communications cable stretching from Portugal to South Africa with landings along the route in various west African countries. On April 28, 2008, it was announced that Main Street Technologies has awarded a turnkey supply contract for the Main One Cable System to Tyco Telecommunications.
The West Africa Cable System (WACS) is a submarine communications cable linking South Africa with the United Kingdom along the west coast of Africa that was constructed by Alcatel-Lucent. The cable consists of four fibre pairs and is 14,530 km in length, linking from Yzerfontein in the Western Cape of South Africa to London in the United Kingdom. It has 14 landing points, 12 along the western coast of Africa and 2 in Europe completed on land by a cable termination station in London. The total cost for the cable system is $650 million. WACS was originally known as the Africa West Coast Cable (AWCC) and was planned to branch to South America but this was dropped and the system eventually became the West African Cable System.
Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) is an optical-fiber submarine cable system serving 24 countries on the Europe, west coast and south Africa, managed by a consortium of 20 members.
The GLO-1 (Globacom-1) submarine communications cable is a cable system along the west coast of Africa between Nigeria and the UK, owned by Nigerian telecoms operator Globacom.
SAex is a proposed submarine communications cable linking South Africa to the United States with branches to Namibia, Saint Helena, and Brazil.
The CS Chamarel, originally CS Vercors was a cable layer owned by France Telecom Marine, laying submarine communications cables around the world. It was built in 1974 and destroyed by a fire in August 2012. As the Vercors, the ship laid cables on and between all continents except Antarctica, including numerous trans-Atlantic cables and the first ever Israeli-made cable, and set the record for the deepest submarine buried cable lay in 2000. The ship was badly damaged by a fire and driven aground on 8 August 2012.
The South Atlantic Cable System or SACS, is a submarine communications cable in the South Atlantic Ocean linking Luanda, Angola with Fortaleza, Brazil with a leg connecting the Brazilian archipelago of Fernando de Noronha as well. It is the first low latency routing between Africa and South America.
WASACE was a planned system of submarine communications cables consisting of four sections with a total length of 29,000 km linking four continents.
Seaborn Networks is a developer, owner, and operator of submarine communications cables. Seaborn is the owner and operator of the Seabras-1 "submarine communications cable" between Brazil and the United States. Seabras-1 is fully operational (2017) and provides the first direct route between Sao Paulo, Brazil, and the United States. The system has branching units installed on certain of its fiber pairs that point towards Virginia Beach (US), Miami (US), St. Croix (US), Fortaleza (Brazil), Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), Brazil South. Seaborn's ARBR subsea system is a fully funded 4-fiber pair, 48 Tbit/s system. ARBR will directly connect São Paulo, Brazil to Buenos Aires, Argentina. ARBR will connect to Seabras-1 in Seaborn's Praia Grande CLS enabling the most direct, lower latency connection between Argentina and the USA. Partners Group is providing full project equity capital for Seabras-1 and development capital was provided by Seaborn. Seabras-1 is owned jointly by Seaborn Networks and Partners Group. The US$520 million project funding for Seabras-1 has been completed. The project funding also includes a total project debt commitment of up to US$267 million provided by Natixis, Banco Santander, Commerzbank, and Intesa Sanpaolo, which debt is backed by COFACE, the French Export Credit Agency. Seabras-1 is the first direct point-to-point submarine cable system between the financial centers of the US and Brazil.
EllaLink is an optical submarine cable linking the European and South American continents with landing points in Sines in Portugal and Fortaleza in Brazil. It has currently the lowest latency on the market.
