Brazil picks Chinese supplier for second stretch of Amazon fiber project

Brazil has hired Chinese optical fiber and cable manufacturer Hengtong as the supplier for the second stretch of its landmark Amazon under-river fiber project Norte Conectado (North Connected), BNamericas was told.

Dubbed Infovia 01, this stretch will run 1,000km from Manaus in Amazonas state to Santarém in Pará state and will cost an estimated 165mn reais (US$33mn). Deployment is expected to be completed in late 2022 or early 2023. 

Founded in 1991, Wujiang-based Hengtong is the controlling shareholder of HMN, formerly Huawei Marine Networks (HMN), the spun-off subsidiary of China’s Huawei.

Hengtong claims to be the largest optical fiber and power cable manufacturer in China and one of the world’s top three optical fiber communication enterprises. The group says it supplies 15% of the international market for this type of equipment. 

Its underwater cable lines are used by the offshore industry, with clients mentioned on its official website including Malaysia’s Petronas, a Kazakhstan refinery and the Russian government, among others.

Hengtong has had a manufacturing plant in Pouso Alegre in Minas Gerais state since 2015, where the cables for Infovia 00 are being manufactured, according to Eduardo Grizendi, director of engineering and operations at the country’s national research and educational network (RNP).

Other suppliers for Infovia 01, such as for DWDM optical equipment and the cable launcher, are expected to be selected in the third quarter of this year.

The Norte Conectado project was created by the communications ministry with the goal of expanding communications infrastructure in the Amazon region of the country through an underwater fiber backbone, composed of eight stretches (Infovias or info-lanes), rolled out over along rivers in the Amazon basin.

Linked to the science and technology ministry (MCTI), RNP was responsible for the first stretch, Infovia 00, due to its expertise with backbone connectivity and because the government wanted to test the model. Infovia 00 was a "pilot", said Grizendi.

Infovia 00 was completed in February this year, connecting Macapá (Amapá state) to Alenquer (Pará). Italy’s Prysmian was the cable supplier, having been contracted in 2021 for US$5.54mn. The cables were manufactured in Germany. 

The total investment in Infovia 00 was 94mn reais, funds that came from the communications ministry.

While RNP has a seat on Norte Conectado’s steering committee, the entity will not be the coordinator of the program’s subsequent stretches.

For Infovia 01, the company in charge is EAD (Seja Digital), the group formed by telcos and broadcasters to oversee the application of resources related to TV digitization in Brazil, as part of the 2014 700MHz spectrum auction obligations. 

BNamericas confirmed that Hengtong had been awarded the contract with a source at EAD. 

As for the remaining seven stretches of Norte Conectado, the group EAF will be in charge. EAF was created by the telcos who won November's 5G spectrum auction to oversee obligatory tender investments. The investment in Amazon connectivity was one of these obligations. 

INFOVIA 00

The network for Infovia 00, including the access networks (from the backbone to the cities), landing stations, modular datacenters and related equipment are all in place already.

In late May, RNP activated Infovia 00's DWDM system, the technology that lights the fiber backbone for transmission.

What is now pending is to sign a contract with the consortium of companies that will use the network. This is slated for June 29, according to Grizendi.

This group is formed by Telefônica Brasil as the anchor telecom operator, and five ISPs: BRDigital, Wirelink, ICOM, SEA Telecom and Aquamar.

Another two companies, one operator and one telecom services company, are interested in joining, Grizendi said.

He added that the contract provides for the possibility of bringing new partners on board after approval by the steering committee, pointing out that Infovia 00 still has some idle capacity. 

The cable has 24 pairs of fiber optics, each fiber with a data channel with transmission capacity of 100Gbps. The public sector is entitled to six of these pairs, leaving 18 for private companies. 

Of these, 12 will be used by the six telcos in the consortium, leaving six more pairs for at least three more companies.

The project has suffered various delays, mostly due to the pandemic, according to Grizendi, affecting the hydrological studies and site survey. EGS Brasil was the company hired to carry out this process. 

Also, the environmental permitting was complex as it had to go through different federal and state overseeing bodies, Grizendi said. 

Hired for 7.5mn reais, Navegação Prates concluded the launch of the cable in the river in February. 

MDC Industria de Conteineres provided the modular datacenters for 5.1mn reais, while Padtec provided the DWDM optical system for 3.51mn reais.

The metropolitan stretches, which distribute the backbone signal to premises in the towns and cities along the river, were finalized in March.

MAXIMIZING THE NETWORK

RNP's nationwide fiber backbone is extensive and powerful, but could be used better, according to Grizendi.

"We want to maximize the use of our optical infrastructure. We have metropolitan networks … that can reach to the antennas, to the radio base stations," Grizendi told press during an open 5G event in Campinas.

RNP was Brazil’s first national backbone. It connects over 800 institutions in the country and has 27 points of presence (PoPs), one in each Brazilian state. It is also connected to submarine cables and to global research and educational networks, such as Europe’s Géant and Latin America’s RedCLARA.

Now, RNP is studying becoming an MVNO, Grizendi said. 

The goal is to leverage its backbone and use the access networks deployed by telecom operators to offer data plans to an addressable base of roughly 4mn researchers and professionals in the educational community it serves with its fixed infrastructure, he said.

This format is not new, according to the executive, pointing to SURFnet, the organization responsible for the Netherlands’ national educational and research network (NREN) as an example.

Picture Source: EAD (Seja Digital)