Portugal sits at the intersection of four continents via submarine cables, with green energy, 98% fibre coverage, and direct Atlantic connectivity through Sines. Samuel Carvalho, CEO of TelCables Europe, tells SAPO the country can become Europe’s data brain — but only if it acts now on regulation, investment incentives, and infrastructure redundancy before competitors seize the opportunity.
Why Lisbon, Why Now
When Angola Cables launched TelCables Europe last year as its subsidiary for European and North American markets, it didn’t choose London, Frankfurt, or Amsterdam. It chose Portugal — specifically, it planted its flag in Sines and Lisbon. The reasoning is geographic as much as strategic.
Portugal connects directly to four continents via submarine fibre and indirectly to five. The EllaLink cable, a 6,200 km system running from Sines to Fortaleza, Brazil, delivers 100 Tbps of capacity and offers the lowest-latency route between Europe and South America. Fortaleza has already transformed from a sleepy port town into the world’s second-most-connected cable landing point, with 14 to 17 cables now terminating there. Portugal aims for the same trajectory.
Samuel Carvalho, now CEO of TelCables Europe, laid out the vision in an extensive SAPO interview published June 3, 2026: position Lisbon as Europe’s data gateway, accelerate terrestrial and submarine infrastructure, and capture the AI-driven data centre economy before it anchors elsewhere.
The Submarine Chokepoint Problem
The interview arrives at a moment of heightened awareness about submarine cable vulnerability. Roughly 95% of intercontinental internet traffic travels through undersea fibre optic cables — infrastructure that follows the same corridors as merchant shipping lanes and energy pipelines. The concentration creates bottlenecks at points like the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal, and the Red Sea.
When Houthi attacks disrupted shipping through Suez, the impact extended underwater. The UK-owned vessel Rubymar, struck by a Houthi missile in February 2024, drifted and severed three major cables: AAE-1, EIG, and SEACOM. The incident forced operators into emergency committee mode. Angola Cables, which operates multiple cables circumnavigating Africa, joined consortia to reroute traffic from American hyperscalers — instead of entering through Egypt and Marseille, data began flowing around Africa’s entire coastline to reach Europe and the United States.
“It’s exactly the same movement as merchant ships,” Carvalho explained. When Suez becomes impassable, the traffic follows the Cape of Good Hope — in data as in container shipping. Recent analysis from AGBI confirms that roughly 30% of all intercontinental internet traffic transits submarine cables through the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, and Red Sea corridor.
The Russia-Ukraine war added another dimension. Russian officials have publicly referenced the possibility of cutting transatlantic cables in the North Sea — a threat documented and discussed at the Submarine Cables and Infrastructure Observatory, where TelCables participates alongside ANACOM and the ITU.
Portugal’s Cable Infrastructure
Portugal’s submarine cable ecosystem has grown substantially. By 2026, the country is expected to host up to 22 submarine cables, connecting to 124 cable landing stations worldwide across 75 countries on five continents, according to DataCenterPost. The key systems landing in Portuguese territory include:
| Cable System | Route | Capacity | Strategic Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| EllaLink | Sines (PT) → Fortaleza (BR) | 100 Tbps | Lowest-latency Europe–South America route |
| MONET | Brazil → US → PT (via Angola Cables) | Multi-Tbps | US–Brazil–Europe triangle connectivity |
| SACS | Angola → Brazil | Multi-Tbps | Direct Africa–South America backbone |
| WACS | South Africa → Europe (via PT) | Multi-Tbps | Africa circumnavigation alternative to Suez |
| Google Equiano | Portugal → South Africa | 144 Tbps (design) | US hyperscaler-owned Atlantic backbone |
| Azores Ring (planned) | Azores islands interconnection | Smart cable | Environmental + security monitoring |
These cables converge primarily on Sines — a deep-water port with green energy infrastructure, direct submarine access, and a growing data centre campus. The next major cable from the United States will route through the Azores before making landfall in mainland Portugal, followed by a second US cable also passing through the Azores before branching to northern Spain. Both systems require the Azores inter-island submarine ring to function, a system currently being replaced with smart cables equipped with environmental sensors and vessel detection transponders.
The AI Energy and Latency Crunch
The case for Portugal as a data hub goes beyond cable geography. The AI industry’s energy demands are reshaping where infrastructure gets built. A standard server rack consumed 5 to 10 kW five years ago. Today, a single AI-optimised processor draws 80 to 120 kW — plus the water-cooling infrastructure required to keep it operational. That’s a 10x escalation in power density within a single product cycle.
Portugal’s electricity costs sit below the European average, comparable to or lower than Dublin — the current European data centre stronghold. Sines specifically offers renewable energy, water-based cooling systems, and an industrial-scale power grid. The Start Campus facility, built on the site of a decommissioned power plant, uses modular data centre architecture with on-site backup generators and seawater cooling loops.
But energy alone won’t close the deal. As we’ve covered in our analysis of AI infrastructure cost overruns, the compute layer is only part of the equation. Network latency determines whether AI workloads can actually run at the edge — and AI inference operates within a 2-millisecond window. At roughly 1 millisecond per 90 to 100 km of fibre, that means AI edge data centres need to be spaced within 200 km of each other.
Right now, 93% of Portugal’s data centres sit within 90 km of Lisbon. The Porto region — cooler climate, strong grid, proximity to Spanish cable landing points in Galicia and Cantabria — remains underdeveloped. Carvalho advocates for a Lisbon-Porto-Galicia fibre ring to create redundancy and unlock the north, noting that hyperscalers already plan Azores-to-mainland routes but lack terrestrial backbone to distribute capacity inland.
What’s Blocking the Path
Talk to enough infrastructure operators and the same three obstacles surface: administrative friction, absence of special economic zones for digital businesses, and a thin domestic Autonomous System Number (ASN) base.
Portugal has fewer than ten active ASNs — the internet equivalent of vehicle registrations. Without ASNs, companies can’t originate traffic from Portuguese soil. Their data transits through instead of terminating. Microsoft, for instance, may pass through Portugal but route its heavy compute to Spain, where ASN density and data centre scale are both greater.
The solution, Carvalho argues, lies in public-private partnerships (PPP) modelled on what worked in Fortaleza and Luanda: government contributes 30% through regulatory frameworks, tax incentives, and EU fund leverage; private operators invest the remaining 70%. The Madeira model is instructive — EU telecom funding covers 50% of project costs, rising to 70% when the project increases the region’s strategic relevance.
Google’s single cable landing in Portugal already generates an estimated €500 million in digital-economy GDP. The data economy is projected to push that figure past €900 million. But capturing that growth requires conditions that match what Dublin, Virginia, or Delaware offer — not just cheap electrons.
The Atlantic Triangle Opportunity
Angola Cables’ broader network reveals the strategic geometry. São Paulo is the world’s largest internet traffic exchange point. Johannesburg ranks fifth. Both are in the Southern Hemisphere. Lisbon sits at the northern apex of this Atlantic triangle, with direct cable routes to both.
When disruptions hit Suez or Hormuz, traffic reroutes around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope through Angola Cables’ circumnavigation network. That makes Portugal — and specifically Sines — the logical European termination point for an increasingly important alternative route. Carvalho confirmed that Angola Cables has already rerouted American hyperscaler traffic through this African corridor during Red Sea disruptions.
The opportunity extends to the CPLP (Community of Portuguese Language Countries). Brazil, Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Timor-Leste represent a combined market of over 280 million people. A Portuguese data hub with direct cable connectivity to all of them creates a Lusophone digital corridor that no other European country can replicate. As critical infrastructure security grows more urgent, the physical separation of Atlantic routes from Mediterranean and Red Sea chokepoints adds a resilience argument on top of the commercial one.
Portugal Must Act Now
Every year of delay is a year where Valencia builds out its Mediterranean cable hub, Dublin reinvents its tax incentives, and northern Spain lands new transatlantic systems. Carvalho is blunt: “Portugal has potential to be the brain of Europe — its geography even looks like a brain. But we need decisions that capture investment on a ten-year horizon, not tied to political cycles.”
The infrastructure is arriving regardless. Cables will land, capacity will grow, and traffic will flow. The question is whether Portugal becomes a production hub — with data centres, AI edge nodes, ASN density, and sovereign cloud infrastructure — or remains a transit corridor where value is generated elsewhere. The answer depends on regulatory agility, PPP commitment, and whether the country can turn its Atlantic geography into economic gravity before the window closes.
Sources
- SAPO — “Portugal tem potencial para ser o cérebro dos dados na Europa” (June 3, 2026)
- SubTel Forum — Angola Cables Launches European Subsidiary TelCables
- DataCenterPost — Angola Cables Expands with Start Campus Alliance
- AGBI — The Digital Chokepoint Beneath Hormuz (April 2026)
- GeoCables — EllaLink Cable System Specifications