Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, has announced the activation of its commercial service in the first section of the BlueMed submarine cable connecting Palermo with Genoa to Milan.
Operators, ISPs, enterprises and institutions will benefit from connections at multiples of 100 or 400 Gbps with a latency reduction of 50% compared to the terrestrial cables connecting Sicily with Milan today.
BlueMed is Sparkle's new cable that will connect Italy with France, Greece and several countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea all the way to Aqaba in Jordan. The cable is part of the Blue and Raman Submarine Cable Systems, built in partnership with Google and other operators, and will extend to Mumbai in India.
Fully integrated with Sparkle's network, BlueMed increases its resilience by offering a safe and diverse route between Sicily and Milan, in addition to the existing terrestrial backbones. Thanks to the security of the submarine route, BlueMed provides ultra-high-speed connectivity and performance that are unique to date.
Each fiber pair is lit with an innovative transmission platform with a throughput of 30 Terabits per second (Tbps), which is currently the highest submarine backbone capacity per fiber pair in service in the Mediterranean region and is destined to increase as the technology evolves further.
The Sicily Hub neutral data center in Palermo — the technological heart and intelligence of the Sparkle network, already connected with eighteen international cables landing in Sicily — is enriched with this new and innovative route to continental Europe for the benefit of service providers in Africa and the Middle East, as well as content providers exchanging traffic and digital applications on the island.
The Genoa Digital Hub in Lagaccio — an open and neutral colocation facility and a new interconnection point for terrestrial networks and international submarine cables, including Blue and Raman Submarine Cable Systems — sees the first traffic flows activated with the potential to develop the city's ecosystem. The hub is also set for significant growth thanks to the Genoa Landing Platform and the newly established Ge-DIX exchange point.
The fiber optic system ends its journey at the Milan hub, which has become a rich, high-growth digital ecosystem in recent years. The submarine system's attestation is developed within the STACK campus in Siziano, which offers a wide range of connectivity solutions and can connect all data centers in the Milan area as well as major national and international providers.
After the Palermo-Genoa-Milan route, activations will follow to Pomezia (Rome), Golfo Aranci (Sardinia), Bastia (Corsica) and Marseille by the end of 2023. In 2024, the other routes in the Central and Eastern Mediterranean will open.