Sparkle announced plans for a massive subsea cable along the west coast of Italy, linking Genoa and Palermo.
BlueMed will be a multi-fiber cable spanning 1,000 kilometers and with a design capacity of 240 Tbps. It will cross the Tyrrhenian Sea connecting Sparkle’s Sicily Hub open data center in Palermo, which serves eighteen international cables, with Genoa’s new open landing station, directly connected to Milan’s rich digital ecosystem. BlueMed will also include multiple branches within the Tyrrhenian Sea and is set to support further extensions southbound of Sicily.
With a capacity up to 240 Tbps and about 1,000 km long, BlueMed will provide advanced connectivity between Middle East, Africa, Asia and the European mainland hubs with up to 50% latency reduction than existing terrestrial cables connecting Sicily with Milan.
BlueMed is expected to enter service in 2020.
Sparkle also noted that its new open landing station in Genoa is set to become the alternative priority access for other upcoming submarine cables to Europe.
“The investment on the deployment of BlueMed and of the landing station in Genoa represents the first phase of a wider plan aimed at consolidating Sparkle’s leadership in the Mediterranean basin through the extension and enhancement of its regional backbone”, says Mario Di Mauro, CEO of Sparkle.
