1,100 km of cable connects Madeira to mainland

Final phase installed at Praia Formosa

The Diario reports that the President of the Regional Government, Miguel Albuquerque, will tomorrow attend the final installation phase of the new submarine telecommunications cable at Praia Formosa, which will connect Madeira to the mainland (satellite photo below – “X” marks the spot!). The Portuguese investment in the cable link between Sines, south of Setubal on the mainland, and in the Region amounts to €15.1 million.

The EllaLink cable incorporates technology capable of providing the most advanced submarine telecommunications system and will have a capacity of 30 terabits per second.

The cable connection between Madeira and the Portuguese mainland totals around 1,100 kilometres, connecting by branch units to the main submarine cable about 80 kilometers from the coast.

This optical system submarine will allow a high capacity, low latency connection between Lisbon and Funchal. Its construction will be carried out by the company ASN – Alcatel Submarine Networks, with extensive experience in the area of ​​subsea systems.

The formalization of the decision by the Regional Government was madein May 2018, with the signature of a contract between EMACOM and EllaLink Ireland Limited in the amount of €13.6 million for the provision of a telecommunications infrastructure underwater between Funchal and Sines. In addition to this, the investment of €1.5 million related to on-shore (onshore) infrastructure, including construction costs of the Amparo Terrestrial Station and respective equipment and the launch of the cable between Praia Formosa and the last one.

This infrastructure provides the irrevocable right to use a dedicated fiber pair in the EllaLink cable, The ownership of the Madeira derivation, and the supply of the optical transmission equipment with 300Gbps initial capacity. Granted also support for expanding the maximum transmission capacity to 30Tbps and a useful life of not less than 25 years.

ECS is located inside the 2-floor Amparo substation above Praia Formosa, which underwent a total restructuring to provide the building with the necessary conditions to receive a receiving station of submarine cables. It has a datacentre environment for the installation of the submarine cable transmission and operation equipment, space for interconnection racks with other operators, and air conditioning.

The terrestrial layout in optical fibre between ECS and Praia Formosa has two kilometers of extension and was successfully implemented last December, in parallel with the works to reinforce the Praia Formosa wall and the construction of the head which serves as an interface with the underwater component of the EllaLink cable.

In addition to the dedicated fibre pair, a third fibre will be used to implement the EllaLink GeoLab. In collaboration with the scientific networks Géant and FCT, this initiative aims to provide accurate and relevant data in real-time to the scientific community. seabed conditions. Based on DAS technology – Acoustic Sensor Distributed – a pioneering technique that allows for health monitoring submarine cable through the analysis of the single optical signal phase pattern.

Detecting deviations of that subscription allows association with external events on the submarine bottom trawling, earthquake detection, monitoring of currents sea, displacement of tectonic plates and other phenomena.

The analysis is performed using the OTDR (Optical time-domain reflectometer) technique, which analyzes differences in the propagation of the optical signal in certain sections of the submarine cable. The analysis equipment will be installed at the CLS of Funchal.

The Funchal – Sines connection will be the first in operation worldwide that incorporates this technology permanently.

Replication is an even more sincere form of flattery

COVID-19 in Madeira: daily updates can be found on an earlier post.