Google is collaborating with Sparkle and others to build and operate two submarine cable systems linking the Middle East with southern Europe and Asia:
- the Blue Submarine Cable System connecting Italy, France, Greece, and Israel;
- the Raman Submarine Cable System connecting Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Oman and India.
Both cables will be equipped with 16 fiber optic pairs and are expected to be ready for service in 2024. They will also support multiple fibre tenants, and feature open landing stations enabling competitive access to the cable termination points.
Sparkle notes that 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. Within the Blue System, BlueMed submarine cable is now Sparkle’s own private domain sharing its wet components with four additional fibre pairs and an initial design capacity of more than 25 Tbps per fibre pair, and 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, Cyprus and more in the future.
