The public consultation process initiated by the Directorate-General for Natural Resources, Safety and Maritime Services (DGRM) aims to issue the Private Use Title of the National Maritime Space (TUPEM) for the installation and operation of Google’s transatlantic telecommunications submarine cable.
The public consultation for the Nuvem project, which is promoted by Sailfish Infrastructure, representing Google LLC in Portugal, will run until July 9 and is available on the Participa portal of the Portuguese Environment Agency.
The project summary outlines that the request for the TUPEM issuance for the use of an area of national maritime space, for a maximum period of 25 years, aims at the installation and operation of the telecommunications submarine cable, marking the first direct connection between the United States and Portugal.
The cable route “located in Portuguese waters” spans “2,992.82 kilometers, from the coast of Sines, passing through the Territorial Sea and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of mainland Portugal and continuing in the Azores EEZ, up to the line corresponding to the limit of the extended Portuguese continental shelf,” it states.
The fiber optic submarine cable between Sines and the east coast of the US will have “an approximate total length of 6,870 kilometers,” with anchor points in Bermuda and the Azores.
The document states that the Nuvem system “will provide direct, reliable, and low-latency connections between the US east coast and Europe” to facilitate “the connection of major intercontinental cable routes.”
“This additional capacity is necessary to meet the growing demand for international telecommunications traffic, ensuring diversification and redundancy of routes in the Atlantic, safeguarding the continuity of international telecommunications traffic services, and creating a more resilient submarine transmission network,” it mentions.
The cable “has a designed capacity of 200 terabits per second, which will support network access for hundreds of millions of people,” the promoters indicate in the document, adding that the connection to Portugal “will benefit businesses and consumers.”
“Internet usage in Portugal grew from 6.8 million users in 2014 to 8.8 million by the end of 2022,” the promoter highlights.
For the anchoring of the Nuvem cable in Sines, the Visit Box (BMH) on Areão beach in this Alentejo municipality, of the EllaLink submarine cable, will be used under an agreement between the companies “for utilization of all terrestrial infrastructure parts of the respective cable.”
The Google submarine cable, with anchor points in Bermuda and the Azores, was presented in July 2024 in Ponta Delgada, São Miguel Island, Azores, and was considered a project of “relevant public interest” by the Regional Government.
At the time, the company anticipated that the system could be operational by 2026 and estimated a 500 million euro impact on the national economy.
