Meta’s Malbec submarine cable will be extended to the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Laid in collaboration with Brazilian fiber company V.tal, the 2.5km (1.56 mi) cable became operational in 2021, and it currently connects Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Meta will partner with V.tal again in order to extend the cable to Porto Alegre, the state capital of Rio Grande do Sul. The cable is expected to be operational by 2027.

Governor of Rio Grande do Sul Eduardo Leite said that this investment “[represented] a strategic milestone for the state’s future,” and that it would “[foster] artificial intelligence projects [and] technologies that are already transforming the present and will define the future of innovation.”

CEO of V.tal Felipe Campos added that the cable would position Porto Alegre as a new connectivity hub, attracting “the interest of operators and Internet providers, as well as other submarine cable companies.

In addition, all the Southern Cone countries will benefit from this new ecosystem, not to mention the end users and companies who will have a better experience when using the Internet and digital applications.”

This will be the first subsea cable to land in the Brazilian state. Most of the country’s cable landing stations are located in Fortaleza, Rio de Janeiro, or Praia Grande.

Meta also plans to deploy a 50,000km (31,070 mi) globe-spanning cable called Project Waterworth, which will connect Brazil to the US, India, and South Africa.

In March, V.tal acquired the fiber optic business of rival Brazilian telco Oi for R$5.71 billion ($980 million). The company also began operating its own data centers in October 2024, and it intends to build a 200MW facility in São Paulo at some point in the future.