Globally there has been an exponential increase in data volume. The amount of data created, consumed and stored is expected to reach over 180 zettabytes in 2025, 90 times the amount of 2010. Nevertheless, these values hide connectivity disparities, where Europe lags behind the United States, with Americas’ installed bandwidth capacity 106% higher than EMEA, by the end of 2020.
A new vision of Europe’s connectivity is ongoing, with the commitment to build its infrastructure to cope with data dependency from other major hubs in the US and Asia, securing a funding of 1B€ under the Connecting Europe Facility project. This new vision will benefit those countries that are a good base for global subsea cable connections and have dense terrestrial connectivity to their European counterparts.
Despite its fantastic geographical location for subsea cables, Portugal has not been typically the focus of large connectivity and Data Centre players due to lack of information and awareness.
On the most western coast of Europe, Portugal appears as an attractive location meeting Europe’s infrastructure requirements with a competitive, robust and far-reaching connectivity. Also, the Portuguese Government is very supportive of new investment projects, speeding up the licensing process.
Portugal remains one of the few countries in the world that has direct connections to five continents and is being highly regarded in the deployment of the new generation of submarine cables by leading companies, such as Google and Facebook, ensuring 880 TBPS of additional capacity with lowlatency connections to major global hubs.
Great subsea connectivity, combined with a high capillary and redundant terrestrial connectivity network, allows, for example, “Green Giants” to take advantage of abundant and cheaper land and proximity of renewable power, whilst always guarantying great connectivity to major European hubs.
Portugal is starting to play a role as a key country in the future of global connectivity, with a clear mandate to manage and distribute traffic between Europe and other continents.
