On Monday, the assistant secretary of state for communications said in the debate on the 2020 State Budget that the new generation of submarine cables should be "an open and non-monopolistic system" which should have seismic detection sensors.

Alberto Souto de Miranda also said that the working group on the replacement of the submarine cables that provide the Mainland-Azores-Madeira communications links "met the deadline" and had delivered its report "days ago".

Today, in a statement, the Ministry of Infrastructure said that the experts who joined the working group "concluded that Portugal now has a unique and unrepeatable opportunity to improve territorial cohesion, contributing to the economic development of the Mainland-Azores-Madeira area over the next 25 years".

The report "contains 12 recommendations about the new CAM ring within the established timeframe, i.e. by the year 2023".

The report also recommended the interconnections in the Azores and Madeira archipelagos be analysed at a later stage".

The government "will now assess the conclusions of the working group and should take decisions both on the suggested deadlines and on the management model and its financing".

The working group included representatives of the Ministers of Finance, Planning and Infrastructure and Housing, regional governments and Anacom Communications Regulator.