EllaLink reports that it has been awarded a contract by SPLANG (the Local Public Company for the Digital Development of Guyana) for a 2,100 km extension to the existing EllaLink cable to land in the South American French territory.

A press release said that the new branch will land in Cayenne, French Guiana, and include two fiber pairs. The system will be built by Alcatel Submarine Networks. No timetable was provided.

The original EllaLink cable was lain between late 2020 and 2021 and runs from Fortaleza in Brazil via Cabo Verde and Madeira to Sines in Portugal, with a branch to Morocco. The 5,900-km cable offers around 100Tbps across four fiber pairs.

State-owned SPLANG manages and operates electronic communications infrastructures deployed by the Territorial Collectivity of Guyana. The project will include funding from the EU’s Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) program.

This will be the first trans-Atlantic cable landing at the South American French territory. French Guiana currently has three other subsea cables planned or in operation, with two landing in Cayenne.

The Americas-II cable, laid in 2000, runs from Brazil to Florida via Cayenne, Venezuela, and a number of islands in the region, while 2019’s Kanawa cable from Orange connects Kourou in French Guiana to Schoelcher in Martinique. Set to go live later this year, Digicel’s Deep Blue One will connect Cayenne to Georgetown, Guyana; Paramaribo, Suriname; and Chaguaramas and Rockly Bay in Trinidad and Tobago.