THE EUROPE AND BRAZIL SUBMARINE CABLE INITIATIVE: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

The virtual connection between Brazil and other countries worldwide was always made with submarine cables connected in the USA as a crossing point. To Brazil, that reality is a meaningful connection to improve its share communication with other actors, but, on the other side, it represents a Brazilian virtual system dependence on USA infrastructure and a threat about how safe and inviolable the information traffic would be. In that perspective, and after Snowden denounces, the Brazilian government of Dilma Rousseff started on 2014 a negotiation with Europe to build a high-performance submarine cable between the cities of Fortaleza, on the Brazil northeast, and Sines, on the south of Portugal. The main target with that project was to withdraw the Brazil submarine cable dependence on the USA and create an alternative way to share virtual information with other great international players – Europe, that had its leaders also spied on by NSA as Snowden sad. The submarine cable was launched last June 1st and now represents the most critical way to connect Brazil to the world.