Norte Conectado (Infovia 02)

Norte Conectado (Infovia 02): what this cable is

Norte Conectado (Infovia 02) is a stretch of Brazil's federal Norte Conectado ("Connected North") program, whose goal is to extend a fiber-optic backbone into the hard-to-reach parts of the Amazon. Its defining feature: this is not an ocean submarine cable but a subfluvial system, fiber laid along the beds of the Amazon basin's rivers. In a region with few roads, where the rivers serve as the main highways, laying cable along the riverbed is often the only way to bring terrestrial connectivity to remote municipalities.

Infovia 02 links Manaus with the town of Atalaia do Norte, passing through 17 municipalities of western Amazonas and reaching Tabatinga in the "three borders" area (Três Fronteiras), where Brazil meets Colombia's Amazonas department. It is scheduled to enter service in 2026; the infrastructure owner is the neutral administrator EAF (Entidade Administradora da Faixa).

Geography and route

The Infovia 02 route runs west from Manaus, upstream along the Solimões river and connected channels. Among the nodes the route reaches are Benjamin Constant, Tabatinga, São Paulo de Olivença, Santo Antônio do Içá, Fonte Boa, Tefé, and other towns of western Amazonas. The end points, Atalaia do Norte and the border town of Tabatinga, open connectivity toward the Colombian side.

This is a fundamentally different geography from marine systems: the route does not run along the sea floor but along the riverbed network, through the rainforest, where many municipalities have until now had no terrestrial fiber anchor at all.

Part of the Norte Conectado program

Infovia 02 is one of eight stretches (infovias) of the Norte Conectado program, which in total is planned for roughly 12,000 km of fiber backbone reaching about 59 settlements across the Amazon. The stretches are built and commissioned in stages: Infovia 01 already delivered, among other things, the cross-border Brazil-Colombia fiber link, and Infovia 02 includes about 28 km of interconnection with Infovia 01, building out a single western-Amazon network.

Technical specifications

• Type: subfluvial (riverbed) backbone with terrestrial segments.
• Length: about 1,758 km of subfluvial cable, 284 km terrestrial, and 28 km of interconnection with Infovia 01.
• Fiber supplier: ZTT (supplying cable for Infovia 02, 03, and 04; across those stretches about 2,345 km of underwater and 456 km of terrestrial cable).
• Investment: about 268 million Brazilian reais.
• Operating model: neutral host, operator selected for 15 years; the government chose seven companies to run it.
• Infrastructure owner: EAF (Entidade Administradora da Faixa).

Why a subfluvial cable

In the Amazon, classic roadside terrestrial deployment is impossible where there are no roads. The rivers act as transport corridors, and fiber laid along their beds follows that natural "road network." This approach is cheaper and more realistic than cutting clearings through the rainforest, and it lets terrestrial connectivity reach towns that previously depended almost entirely on satellite links with high latency and limited capacity.

Why Infovia 02 matters: digital inclusion, not transit

Unlike trans-oceanic trunks, the value of Infovia 02 is not international transit but the connection of previously isolated communities. For western Amazonas this is basic digital-access infrastructure:

• municipalities move from satellite to fiber, which fundamentally changes latency and available capacity;
• it creates a real basis for telehealth, remote education, government services, and digital entrepreneurship in places far from any major node;
• the border town of Tabatinga gains more resilient connectivity in the "three borders" zone, which matters both economically and for service coordination.

What is known and what is not yet disclosed

Publicly known:

• Infovia 02 is a subfluvial stretch of Norte Conectado, Manaus to Atalaia do Norte / Tabatinga, 17 municipalities;
• about 1,758 km of river cable + 284 km terrestrial + 28 km of interconnection with Infovia 01;
• fiber by ZTT; investment about 268 million reais; neutral model for 15 years;
• owner is EAF; service entry scheduled for 2026.

Not yet disclosed, or only partly disclosed: the final list of all operators and the split of capacity among them; exact readiness dates per segment; and a detailed segment-by-segment route map.

Technically: what effect to expect

• Latency. Moving municipalities from satellite to riverbed-and-terrestrial fiber is a shift from hundreds of milliseconds and geostationary delay to tens of milliseconds over a terrestrial route.
• Capacity. A fiber backbone removes the hard limits of satellite capacity, enabling video, cloud services, and proper access for schools and clinics.
• Path diversity and cross-border reach. The interconnection with Infovia 01 and the exit toward the Colombian border at Tabatinga add routes and potential cross-country connectivity for the Amazon basin.
• Resilience. For towns that previously had a single satellite link, the riverbed-and-terrestrial line becomes a qualitatively different anchor, though the river route through the rainforest places special demands on repair and monitoring.

Why this matters for GeoCables / monitoring weak points

Infovia 02 is an example of infrastructure valuable not for transit but for changing the availability topology of remote nodes. Before it, western Amazonas largely hung on satellite; after it, municipalities gain a riverbed-and-terrestrial backbone and a tie into a cross-border network.

For monitoring this means it is worth tracking:

• latency dropping in western-Amazon towns as segments enter service;
• the appearance of new terrestrial BGP routes from these municipalities instead of satellite ones;
• the cross-border Brazil-Colombia tie around Tabatinga;
• line resilience in the flood season and during work on river segments;
• correlation between Infovia 02 outages and individual nodes falling back to satellite.

Short conclusion

Norte Conectado (Infovia 02) is a subfluvial fiber backbone for western Amazonas, laid along riverbeds where there are no roads. Its meaning lies not in international transit but in the fact that dozens of previously isolated municipalities move from satellite to terrestrial fiber and gain a tie into the unified Norte Conectado network and cross-border connectivity at the Colombian border. The most interesting thing here is not the kilometers, but how river-laid fiber changes the availability map of an entire region.

Sources

• BNamericas — Norte Conectado Program (Infovia 02), project profile
• DatacenterDynamics / SDxCentral — ZTT to supply fiber for Infovia 02/03/04
• Developing Telecoms — Brazil-Colombia cross-border fiber link via the Amazon
• TI Inside — Norte Conectado begins second phase of works (2026)