1 April 2020

EllaLink has been shortlisted for CC – Global Awards 2020 in the category ‘Connecting the Unconnected’ and here is why.

Connecting the Unconnected

EllaLink has created for the first time the possibility of moving massive traffic between Europe and Latin America, directly connecting a previously unconnected community of 1.2 billion people, without transiting North America, thereby reducing the latency and improving the predictability of performance.

3 aspects of how EllaLink connects the unconnected:

    • EllaLink directly links Europe and Latin America with the fastest and most secure route giving true POP to POP optical connectivity: these two continents are not currently benefitting from any massive direct connectivity solution.
    • EllaLink has created unique partnerships to connect places with limited connectivity such as Madeira, Cabo Verde, Mauritania, Morocco, the Canary Islands and French Guyana providing them with a direct path to continental Europe.
    • The EllaLink extension to Marseille creates a unique corridor to connect Asia with Latin America as a mirror of the global economy transformation

Connecting Latin America to Europe: it’s all about latency

Latency is the driver of the digital world and EllaLink provides  fast,  direct access between Points of Presence (PoP)  in Europe and Latin America via a shorter, new and unique path with a submarine cable system. The system has been specifically designed to offer reduced latency between major hubs in São Paulo, Lisbon/Sines, Madrid, and Marseille. Amazing improvements in Round Trip Delay (RTD), of up to 50%,  are possible between Madrid and São Paulo.  

Via our direct route, and with the use of state-of-the-art technology, EllaLink will facilitate a reduction in RTD between the European continent and Latin America which will have a big impact on the global IP market and on the enterprise IT delivery model. The EllaLink system also removes the need for European users to reach Latin America via North American, and in doing so creates improved predictability of performance because only one cable system is traversed to reach the end point instead of two (and sometimes more). Software platforms are very sensitive to transmission delays and this limitation has forced providers to deploy their applications in data centres close to their end users. The dramatic decrease in latency provided by the EllaLink route by the order of magnitude of 50% offers an entirely new way for the corporate world to define the architecture of their application layer for companies present either in Europe or Latin America, which in turn creates a change in paradigm for data centre infrastructure used for app deployment. 

Bridging the digital divide securely and neutrally

EllaLink provides bespoke partnerships to bridge the digital divide and promote the growth of telecoms infrastructure in smaller countries such as Mauritania, the archipelago of Cabo Verde, Madeira, Morocco, the Canary Islands and French Guyana – home of the European Space Launching Centre – which have less demand and smaller budgets and thus obtaining a dedicated fibre optic system is a challenge. To that extent, the EIB (European Investment Bank) has been very concerned, proactive and supportive towards our project helping our customer Cabo Verde Telecom (CVT) with the financing of their participation in EllaLink.  

The EllaLink system will not only benefit the telecoms market, but also the scientific and education communities in Europe and Latin America through their respective academic networks. The BELLA program (GEANT + RedCLARA, see http://www.bella-programme.eu/index.php/en/) will benefit from a significant amount of optical spectrum. It will now allow connecting both sides of the Atlantic working with advanced scientific programs such as the Very Large Telescope in Chile, the Copernicus project (earth monitoring) and the Lago Observatory that were previously working almost in standalone mode. This new connection will allow an enhanced collaboration between the research group favouriting knowledge exchange, efficiency and new cases of usages. 

EllaLink is a privately funded company committed to providing products and services on a carrier neutral,  open access and independent basis. Our neutrality ensures that our interests are entirely aligned with that of our customers, anchor tenants and partners. Customer choice is our modus operandi. 

Furthermore, by selecting alternative landing sites, such as Sines, EllaLink is helping to address the issue of diversity; with new landing sites come new cable stations and alternative terrestrial routes. Significant investment into our new landing site in Sines also includes horizontal directional drilling and a new front haul route.  The budget allows for several million euros of investment for Sines alone, a worthwhile price for diversity. 

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