Atlantic CAM – Continent-Madeira Segment

ongoing

Currently, the Portuguese Outermost Regions, namely Autonomous Region of Azores (ARA) and Autonomous Region of Madeira (ARM), are served by a domestic system of submarine cables known as CAM Ring. Due to the impending obsolescence of this system constituents, the retirement of CAM Ring is estimated to occur in 2025 (between Continent-ARM), 2024 (between Continent-ARA) and 2028 (between ARA-ARM). Therefore, timely ensuring its replacement is an essential priority, requiring a long-term solution to satisfy future connectivity needs by providing an adequate response to the challenge of increasing connectivity expected in the next 30 years, namely by the generalisation of 5G mobile communication technologies and by the growing digitalisation of society. To address this structural need, the Atlantic CAM (Global Project) will be created – a ring system of submarine cables with six fibre optic pairs, that will take advantage of Portugal's privileged geographic position and support an interconnection hub for backbone networking systems, ensuring not only the traffic needs of the next 30 years of ARA and ARM regions but also globally, attracting international clients to this hub. The Atlantic CAM will also be one of the first global network backbone infrastructures to ever integrate a state of art SMART component for seismic detection, environmental monitoring, underwater nautical activity detection and data transmission for scientific purposes. In this context, and as part of the Global Project, this action will deploy a submarine cable with 6 fibre pairs and 967 km long between mainland Portugal and Madeira (Continent-Madeira (CM) Segment), and the full fibre drop unpowered stubbed branching unit facing Porto Santo, completing the deployment of the action 22-PT-DIG-Atlantic CAM. The full deployment of the Atlantic CAM platform will play a vital role in reinforcing the digital sovereignty of Portugal and the EU, connecting Europe’s remote regions and providing high-speed data transfer capabilities and secure and reliable communication channels, while reducing the dependence of these regions on non-European countries for critical digital infrastructure.