Madeira Consorcio

Visit to the ORM Cable Centre, Funchal 16.1.2026

Jan 19, 2026 at 11:36 am | Posted in Posts | Leave a comment
Tags: cables, fibre, Madeira, optic

We visited the ORM (“Operação de Redes da Madeira”) in Funchal. Four engineers greeted us and explained the exhibitions and technical details, answered all our questions, divided their attention between us and were incredibly hospitable. Due to the immense amount of information we received, I can only be general in this report.

The Centre is the hub for the undersea cables that link Madeira to Lisbon and London. More importantly, due to its location, Madeira is on the receiving end of international undersea cables that connect the Americas and Africa to Europe. (The Azores have their own cable connection.)

The first copper cables were laid in the 1970s by ships carrying enormous cable reels, which were then lowered into the sea. (Madeira sits on a relatively small land shelf; 50–100 metres beyond the shore, the ocean floor drops to around 5,000 metres.) Around the year 2000, the old copper cables were replaced by fibre-optic cables.  However, there are still some copper cables in use, mainly for elderly clients who refuse to move onto smart technology and retain their ‘pre-smart’ telephones. These will eventually need to be changed due to the cables’ limitations and growth in fibre optic technology.

We had the opportunity to handle samples from the exhibits. The cables are very fine — around 100 fibres in a bundle — and each fibre can carry many separate communications (internet, telephone, and now also television).

The satellite dishes we had in S. Rita until a few years ago were installed when the first RTP-Madeira television channel was launched. Such dishes are not powerful enough to handle multiple TV channels plus telephone and internet traffic; this is only possible with fibre-optic cables.

Fibre-optic cables are made of glass (which, interestingly, is a very slow-flowing liquid) and are extremely durable. On the seabed, the cables — weighed down by the water and immovable even in storms — can really only be damaged by sharks. They sense the light travelling through the fibres and try to bite them. That is why, although the core cable is very fine, it is wrapped in several protective layers to make it “bite-unfriendly”. (Rats go after fibre-optic cables for the same reason.)

The “arrival point” near Praia Formosa is marked by a warning light for the fishing industry so that boats do not approach the cables with anchors. The cables are also buried well below the seabed.

Our cables currently have a capacity of up to 600 gigabytes, and we are still far from reaching this potential with our communication and internet use.

A website showing all the undersea cables in the world is www.submarinecables.com. (The Russians apparently did not consult it, as they came by in 2024 to have a look. The “Mondego” corvette was supposed to shadow the Russian ship, but the crew refused to leave harbour due to technical problems, and another Navy ship had to come from the mainland to monitor the visitor.)

Should the system go down, the station’s generators, oil tanks, and batteries will provide backup. In addition, all information stored is backed up. 

The building also has a lovely museum, where we admired Morse code tickers, telex machines, and other historic equipment (all in good working order), as well as the old uniforms worn by the “postmen” who delivered and collected messages to be telexed across vast distances.

The biggest client is MEO, which now runs the facility under the control of Altice Portugal (MEO is the successor to Portugal Telecom). NOS, Vodafone and Wink also have data centres there, as well as Facebook and other companies that require server hubs. The facility still has rack space available for additional clients.

If Madeira were ever cut off in an emergency and the cables needed repair, we would be offline for a maximum of three weeks; the cable-laying and repair ship is stationed in France.

The island is not as visible as Greenland, thank goodness — but we have some impressive infrastructure here.