Invest in Alentejo – New submarine cables and data centers put Sines at the center of the digital transition
At the second major conference “Meetings at ZILS: Sines Tech, EU-Atlantic Data Gateway Platform”, now exclusively dedicated to the infrastructure of the digital transition, the unique attributes of Sines to host Cable Landing Stations (CLS – Cable Landing Stations) were discussed. telecommunications submarines and install large Data Centers (DC – Data Centers), in line with the EU-Atlantic Data Gateway Platform for Europe’s digital economy.
Promoted by Aicep Global Parques and ADRAL – Agência de Desenvolvimento Regional do Alentejo, this conference, organized within the scope of the Invest in Alentejo initiative, financed by the Alentejo 2020 program, had as its high point the announcement of ongoing processes for the mooring of four new submarine cables in Portugal by 2025. In particular, Google’s Equiano, Facebook’s 2Africa (Meta) and AFR-IX’s Medusa, which join the existing Ellalink fiber optic data cable that currently connects Europe (in Sines) to South America (in Fortaleza).
As for Data Centers, we highlight Start – Sines Transatlantic Renewable & Technology Campus, a project to be installed at ZILS which will be the largest data processing and storage campus powered by renewable energies in Europe, with an investment of €3,500M and which will employ 1,200 people.
The creation of a one-stop-shop for cable mooring in the panel on “Regulation and National Licensing” was also announced, with the presence of ANACOM – Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações, DGRM – Directorate-General for Natural Resources, Security and Services Maritimes and APA – Portuguese Environment Agency. This will be an online pre-registration solution to streamline procedures and bureaucracy for projects in this area, a crucial flexibility for Portugal’s competitive positioning.
