FEATURE FROM INTERNET TO INTELLIGENCE Sines And The South Atlantic AI Corridor BY FERNANDO BORGES AZEVEDO AND JAYNE STOWELL
How Portugal’s Atlantic edge is becoming a low-latency, sovereign and sustainable gateway for global AI infrastructure.
SUMMARY
The shift from internet to intelligence is happening now. AI workloads are redrawing the map of global connectivity and pushing infrastructure closer to renewable power, dense subsea gateways and sovereign jurisdictions. Sines, Portugal, is positioned to become one of the defining hubs of this new map - a European Atlantic edge zone where low-latency routes, green energy and an open ecosystem converge. The next phase will be written through collaboration. Cable owners, carriers, hyperscalers, IX operators and research networks all have a role in shaping the South Atlantic corridor and in proving that sustainable, sovereign and scalable AI infrastructure is not just desirable - it is achievable today. From Sines to the South Atlantic, a new chapter of global connectivity is beginning - one where geography, energy and connectivity finally align with the demands of intelligence at scale.
IBERIA AS THE NEW DIGITAL EXCHANGE HUB
For most of the internet era, Europe’s main digital cross-
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roads sat in a familiar arc running from London through Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris. Traffic from across the world typically converged there before being redistributed across the continent. Today that picture is changing. The Iberian Peninsula, and particularly Portugal’s Atlantic coast together with Spain’s major metros, is emerging as a new exchange zone where global subsea systems, regional terrestrial backbones and large-scale compute intersect. Sines, on Portugal’s Atlantic coast, illustrates this shift. Measured in milliseconds, geography becomes strategy, and Sines delivers consistently low and ultra-low latency into Europe’s main “eyeball” markets. It does not just deliver good latency: it routinely outperforms other locations where large amounts of power are available. When you compare end-to-end performance into the main European consumption hubs, Sines comes out ahead, turning Portugal’s Atlantic edge into a genuine latency advantage for cloud and AI operators. From a wider South Atlantic perspective, Sines also offers highly competitive paths into Latin America, North America and West Africa. Direct connectivity into north-eastern Brazil creates a low-latency bridge to the main South American hubs, while new systems toward the