Novo Airão, Brazil

Novo Airão, Brazil: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Novo Airão is a municipality in the state of Amazonas in northern Brazil, situated on the Rio Negro River approximately 180 kilometres upstream of Manaus. Accessible by both river and road, it serves as a landing point for two submarine cables that connect communities across the Brazilian interior. Unlike the coastal landing points that characterise most of Brazil's international submarine cable infrastructure, Novo Airão's cables form part of an entirely domestic, riverine network designed to extend connectivity through the Amazon basin.

Both cables landing at Novo Airão belong to the Projeto Amazônia Conectada (PAC) programme, a Brazilian initiative that uses submarine cable technology along inland waterways to reach communities in the Amazonas region. This makes Novo Airão a node in a corridor that is neither intercontinental nor coastal, but rather an inter-city domestic route running through one of the world's largest river systems.

Cables Landing at Novo Airão

Projeto Amazônia Conectada (PAC 01) is an 800-kilometre cable that reached ready-for-service status in 2017. It connects landing points exclusively within Brazil, linking communities along the Amazon river system as part of the first phase of the PAC programme. Its status is listed as draft.

Projeto Amazônia Conectada (PAC 02) is a 1,001-kilometre cable that became ready for service in 2021. Like its predecessor, it connects landing points within Brazil, extending the domestic riverine cable network established by PAC 01. Its status is also listed as draft. Together, the two PAC cables give Novo Airão a combined cable footprint of 1,801 kilometres of submarine infrastructure, all operating within Brazilian territory.

Regional Context

Within Brazil's broader submarine cable landscape, Novo Airão sits alongside Autazes as one of the smaller landing points by cable count, each hosting two cables, while larger coastal hubs such as Fortaleza and Rio de Janeiro serve ten and eight cables respectively. Brazil has 22 submarine cables landing across 64 landing points in total, and Novo Airão's two cables place it in the top 93 percent of the country's 74 landing points by cable count. Its distinction lies not in scale but in geography, as an inland riverine node rather than a coastal terminus.

Network Role

Novo Airão functions as a two-cable domestic hub within the Projeto Amazônia Conectada network, enabling connectivity along the Rio Negro and broader Amazon basin corridor. Both cables it hosts are entirely intra-Brazilian, serving the purpose of extending fibre-optic infrastructure to interior communities in the state of Amazonas that would otherwise be difficult to reach by terrestrial means. This separates Novo Airão functionally from Brazil's coastal landing points, which primarily serve international and intercontinental traffic.

As a multi-cable landing point on an inland waterway, Novo Airão demonstrates that submarine cable technology in Brazil extends well beyond the Atlantic coastline, forming a secondary network layer that addresses domestic connectivity across the Amazon region. Its presence in the broader Brazilian submarine cable graph illustrates the geographic diversity of the country's approach to extending fibre infrastructure into its vast interior.