Portugal is ‘well-positioned’ to link Europe to world’s data markets

Portugal is “very well-positioned” in the digital data market to link Europe, America, Africa and the Middle East/Asia, according to the conclusions of a Deloitte study published on Monday.

The consultancy’s study, which says Portugal is a “hidden gem of connectivity” in Europe, adds that “with a central geographical position in connecting various regions of the world” the country “is in the right place and timing to benefit from the explosion of the digital data market, which in recent years has seen an exponential increase in volume, with the amount of data created, consumed and stored reaching more than 180 zettabytes in 2025, 90 times greater than the amount of data in 2010”.

A zettabyte is equivalent to a billion terabytes, the size of a new laptop hard disk.

Still, Deloitte warns, “these figures hide connectivity disparities as Europe lags behind the United States, with installed bandwidth capacity on the American continent around 106% higher than the markets of Europe, Middle East and Africa Region (EMEA), by the end of 2020.”

Deloitte believes that “Portugal has unique conditions to attract the biggest technology ‘players’ that need to expand their offer in the global data market,” reads the same note, where the company argues that the country “emerges as an attractive location that meets Europe’s infrastructure requirements with a competitive, robust and far-reaching connectivity”.

In addition, Deloitte recalls, “the Portuguese government supports new investment projects, speeding up the licensing process,” and “Portugal remains one of the few countries in the world that currently has direct connections to five continents and is recognised for the deployment of new generation undersea cables by leading companies such as Google and Facebook.

According to the consultancy, Portugal has several advantages, including a “privileged geographical position by the Atlantic”, a “vast connection with submarine cables reaching 5 continents”, it is “a key player in the next generation of submarine cable investments”, is “well connected by land to the main European hubs”, has “high capillarity terrestrial network provided by different operators” and is “at the forefront of innovation with several success cases”.

The Portuguese Start Campus presented this Deloitte study at the Pacific Telecommunications Council in Honolulu, Hawaii.