EllaLink has laid two seabed branching units that will connect the Brazilian Amazon states of Pará and Maranhão to its Europe–Latin America submarine cable system, unlocking an initial combined capacity of 17 Tbps for the two states.

Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) manufactured and installed both units during the Lum@link marine installation campaign. Lum@link is a roughly 2,100-kilometre submarine cable extension that links a new cable landing station in Cayenne, French Guiana, to the existing EllaLink trunk system off Fortaleza, in northeastern Brazil.

The units are now in position and ready to receive future submarine branches to Salinópolis, in Pará, and São Luís, in Maranhão. A branching unit is a subsea device that allows a new cable branch to be added to an existing submarine system without disrupting the main route. By installing the units now, during the Lum@link campaign, EllaLink ensures that the Brazilian branches can be deployed and activated later without additional deep-water intervention on the main system. The company describes this as a decision planned years in advance, turning a single route into a scalable network.

EllaLink positions itself as the first high-capacity fibre-optic submarine cable to connect Latin America and Europe directly. The Amazon extension is not purely a commercial play. The governments of Pará and Maranhão funded the branching units, with grant support from the European Union, as part of a broader Amazon connectivity programme co-financed by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Group.

The commercial model reflects that public funding. As with its other dedicated branches, EllaLink acts as an infrastructure operator: it designs, builds and operates the branch, then transfers ownership to its customer. The capacity carried on each branch will be owned and commercialised directly by the states, under their full control. For operators in Pará and Maranhão, that means capacity terms will be set by state governments rather than by a wholesale carrier.

Engineering work is already well advanced. EllaLink has completed the cable route study for both branches, covering offshore and landing routes, together with preliminary permitting, environmental assessments and engineering activities.

Beyond raw bandwidth — where the 17 Tbps initial figure leaves, in the company's words, substantial room for future expansion — the programme targets social outcomes. It aims to extend broadband connectivity to isolated communities and strengthen the resilience of public digital services in healthcare, education, business development and e-government. The programme also includes SMART sensors on the cable infrastructure capable of collecting environmental and seismic data to support climate and scientific monitoring initiatives, with EU support.

The two branches form the Brazilian component of the Mais Conectado (More Connected) project for the Amazon region, co-financed by the IDB Group and the AFD Group. The project is being delivered under the European Union Global Gateway strategy and the EU-LAC Digital Alliance, with the support of Team Europe — placing the Amazon fibre build within the EU's broader infrastructure and digital diplomacy agenda in Latin America and the Caribbean.

With the branching units in place, route studies completed and permitting under way, the remaining milestones are the laying and activation of the branch cables themselves to Salinópolis and São Luís, which will bring state-owned international capacity to the Brazilian Amazon.