The Île de Sein ship departed on Friday with 8,200km of cable – the largest amount of cable ever carried on a ship owned by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN). It is due in New York in two weeks.
The ship is also carrying five branching units and more than 125 repeaters for the 72Tbps project.
Seabras-1, owned by Seaborn Networks, will be the first direct subsea cable linking the financial centres of New York and São Paulo.
ASN will supply a further 2,600km of cable, another two branching units and 45 further repeaters to complete the project, which is expected by June 2017. The cable will connect a landing station at Praia Grande, Brazil, with Wall, New Jersey. Seabras-1 will have 11 points of presence when it is complete.
Seaborn Networks completed the full $520 million funding for the project in 2015. Sparkle announced last year that it owns half the six fibre-pair system, with a $300 million investment.
Seaborn Networks will be at the Capacity LatAm 2017 conference in Rio de Janeiro on 28-29 March
