(Telecompaper) Telefonica has announced that it will be rolling out a new submarine cable called BRUSA linking Rio de Janeiro and Fortaleza in Brazil with San Juan in Puerto Rico and Virginia Beach in the US. The 11,000 km-long cable is expected to be operational by early 2018 and will become part of the company's recently-created global infrastructure unit Telxius, which may be spun off to bring down the group's debt. Telefonica said BRUSA will significantly improve communication reliability and deliver enhanced resilience by increasing the number of US landing points, overall network performance and end-to-end security.