Paris, April 21, 2016

Telefónica, one of the world’s largest telecommunications operators, and Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks (ASN), now part of Nokia, have signed a turnkey agreement to deploy a nearly 11,000 km submarine cable system linking Brazil to the United States. Named BRUSA, the system will increase end-to-end connectivity and the availability of ultra high-speed broadband services in the region.

BRUSA will support ultrafast transmission allowing Telefónica to strengthen its offer in the wholesale market and addressing the exponential growth of data transmission generated by its business-to-business customers, telecom operators, webscale operators and end-users. Linking Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza (Brazil) with San Juan (Puerto Rico) and Virginia Beach (USA), the system will also deliver enhanced resiliency over the Brazil-to-US route.

Philippe Piron , President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks, said: “ BRUSA comes at a moment of continued interest in the Brazil-US route to reliably carry increasing volumes of data traffic as global demand for ultra-broadband access rises. We are pleased to support Telefónica in seizing the growth opportunities of the global wholesale market and meeting its customers’ demands by making available our latest technology advancements in subsea wet design as an integral part of BRUSA .”

BRUSA will deploy Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks’ technology, which provides full scalability that covers large system deployments and web-scale connectivity. Thanks to stepless optical transmission tuning capabilities offered by ASN’s technology, operators can extract maximum capacity from the wet plant and dry plant and create economies of scale by offering fast and dynamic provisioning.

BRUSA will further integrate Telefónica’s global fiber optic network, which consists of more than 65,000 km of subsea cable (of which 31,000 km is proprietary submarine fiber optic cable) connecting the USA, the Americas and Europe.