Macaé, Brazil

Macaé, Brazil: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Macaé is a municipality in the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro, situated approximately 180 kilometres northeast of the state capital. As a coastal location on the South Atlantic seaboard, Macaé serves as a landing point for submarine cable infrastructure connecting it to Brazil's broader undersea network. One submarine cable lands at Macaé, the Brazilian Festoon, which links multiple coastal points within Brazil in a domestic coastal routing arrangement.

The Brazilian Festoon, as its name and country endpoints indicate, operates as an intra-national cable, connecting Brazilian landing points along the country's extensive Atlantic coastline. This positions Macaé within a regional, domestic submarine cable corridor rather than an intercontinental one, reflecting a pattern of coastal connectivity that supports internal data and communications exchange between Brazilian cities and communities.

Cables Landing at Macaé

The Brazilian Festoon is the single submarine cable landing at Macaé. With a length of 2,552 kilometres and a Ready for Service (RFS) year of 1996, it is one of Brazil's earliest submarine cable deployments — coinciding with the earliest recorded submarine cable RFS date for the country. The cable connects multiple points entirely within Brazil, running along the Brazilian coast and linking a series of domestic landing points. Its designation as a draft system reflects its provisional status in cable records.

Regional Context

Among Brazil's submarine cable landing points, Macaé hosts a single cable, placing it among the more modestly connected locations in the country. Major Brazilian hubs such as Fortaleza (10 cables), Rio de Janeiro (8 cables), and Santos (5 cables) accommodate considerably larger concentrations of submarine cable infrastructure. Macaé's role is accordingly more limited in scale, though it nonetheless participates in Brazil's domestic coastal cable network.

Network Role

Macaé functions as a single-cable terminus within Brazil's submarine cable landscape, connected exclusively through the Brazilian Festoon to other domestic landing points along the South Atlantic coast. This makes it a node in an intra-national coastal network rather than a gateway for intercontinental traffic. The cable it hosts predates much of Brazil's modern submarine cable expansion, having entered service in 1996, the earliest RFS year recorded across Brazil's 22 submarine cables.

Within the regional submarine cable graph, Macaé's presence illustrates how domestic coastal festoon systems distribute connectivity among a larger number of smaller landing points alongside major international hubs. Even locations served by a single domestic cable contribute to the geographic distribution of Brazil's undersea network across its 64 landing points.