Extension of the submarine and terrestrial fibre optic cable BELLA to Central America and the Caribbean

By Mayora IP

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen convened the first meeting of the Global Gateway Board. The meeting highlighted the progress that has been made in the first year of implementation of Global Gateway with the target of mobilising €300 billion of investments by 2027. 

The 2021 Global Gateway strategy provides the framework for the EU's external investment in an evolving international context. It is the EU's offer for narrowing the global investment gap, supporting global economic recovery, and accompanying the twin green and digital transitions beyond Europe's borders. Global Gateway covers both hard infrastructure and the enabling environment, regulatory frameworks and norms and standards, technology transfer, know-how. At its core, the ambition is to execute transformative, large-scale projects with a strong infrastructure element that combine public and private financing for investments.

This includes for example in the digital sector the extension of the submarine and terrestrial fibre optic cable BELLA to Central America and the Caribbean and set up Earth Observation Centers in Panama through ‘Copernicus’.

The BELLA (Building Europe Link to Latin America) consortium, whose leading investor is the European Commission, has a contract agreement with EllaLink, a private consortium, for the deployment of an underwater fibre optic cable connecting Europe and Latin America. The cable provides reliable high capacity connectivity that will boost business, scientific and cultural exchanges between the two continents.