Sparkle, Telecom Italia's international services branch is collaborating with a number of partners, including Google to build two new submarine cable systems.
The Blue cable will connect Italy, France, Greece and Israel, while the Raman will connect Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman and India. Each is equipped with 16 fibre pairs and will use the concept of open cable, supporting multiple fibre tenants and open landing stations to enable competitive access to the cable termination points.
In particular, Blue will be deployed along a new northbound route in the Mediterranean, crossing the Strait of Messina, rather than following the traditional route through Sicily Channel. It is designed to help internet service providers, carriers, telecom operators, content providers, enterprises and institutions to benefit from high-speed internet and capacity services.
Within the Blue System, BlueMed submarine cable is now Sparkle’s private domain sharing its wet components with four additional fibre pairs and an initial design capacity of more than 25Tb/s per fibre pair. It is extended up to Jordan (Aqaba) with additional private branches into France (Corsica), Greece (Chania – Crete), Italy (Golfo Aranci – Sardinia and Rome), Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey and Cyprus, with more in the future.Its flexible design allows express connections throughout the Mediterranean Basin, with impressive latency and spectral efficiency.
In addition, the company’s Genoa open landing platform has been designed to offer an alternative priority access for other upcoming submarine cables looking for a diversified entry to Europe, backhauled to Milan’s digital marketplace, and thus a new reference gateway between Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe.
Elisabetta Romano, CEO of Sparkle said: ‘We are extremely proud to bring our collaboration with Google to the next level with this cutting-edge intercontinental infrastructure. With Blue and Raman submarine cable systems, Sparkle boosts its capabilities in the strategic routes between Asia, Middle East and Europe and the enhanced BlueMed strengthens our presence in the greater Mediterranean area.’
Blue and Raman are expected to be ready for service in 2024, with the Tyrrhenian part of BlueMed planned to be operational already in 2022.
