BlueMed, part of the wider Blue Submarine Cable System project launched in partnership with Google and other telcos, connects Italy with France, Greece and other countries in the Med
Sparkle, the international wholesale arm of Telecom Italia, announced the landing of the BlueMed submarine cable in Chania (Greece). BlueMed is Sparkle’s new cable connecting Italy with France, Greece and several countries bordering the Mediterranean. It is part of the Blue & Raman Submarine Cable Systems built in partnership with Google and other operators that stretch further in the Middle East up to Mumbai, India.
Cable laying began in 2023 with the main Tyrrhenian trunk from Genoa to Palermo and with branches to Marseille and Bastia (France), Golfo Aranci (Sardinia), Pomezia (Rome). From Palermo, the cable crossed the Strait of Messina to reach the Greek island of Crete from where it will continue with further branches in the Mediterranean up to Aqaba in Jordan. The Tyrrhenian and the Middle Eastern terrestrial sections are in full operation, while further Mediterranean landings and the full operation from Genoa to Aqaba are expected by this year.
With four fibre pairs and an initial design capacity of more than 25Tbps per pair, BlueMed offers high-speed internet connections and high-performance solutions to ISPs, carriers, telecom operators, content providers, enterprises and institutions to support their growing needs.
New routes for Greece
In Crete, BlueMed reaches Sparkle’s data centre in Chania, a cable landing station interconnected with the island’s terrestrial networks and Sparkle’s MedNautilus network (with connections to mainland Greece, Turkey, and Italy). Sparkle is further developing the hub to accommodate other submarine cable projects including GreenMed that will cross the Adriatic Sea connecting Italy to Croatia, Montenegro, Albania, Greece and Turkey – creating a diversified, low latency route between Central Europe, the Balkans and the Central and Eastern Mediterranean countries.
“With the landing of BlueMed in Crete, Greece is enabling a new digital route for internet traffic between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia,” said Sparkle CEO Enrico Bagnasco. “We have been operating in Greece for more than 20 years and here we have the skills and infrastructures needed to develop it as a new internet hub of the Mediterranean, a role destined to grow further in the future thanks to the landing of new submarine cables.”
“With BlueMed, we strengthen our longstanding presence in Greece and reaffirm our commitment to fostering the development of a digital ecosystem increasingly connected to the world,” added Sparkle chief marketing and product management and CEO of Sparkle Greece Daniele Mancuso. “With four data centres in the country and a wide portfolio of digital services including IoT and networking solutions, we ensure Greek enterprises and institutions efficient communications both within their sites and with their external ecosystems.”
Lighting up the Med
Last September, Sparkle announced the activation of the terrestrial section of the BlueMed cable connecting Aqaba in Jordan to Sparkle’s Mediterranean backbone as well as direct service availability between Aqaba and Milan using BlueMed new segments. When the Italian section of the cable went live, it brought 120Tbps of connectivity across four fibre pairs to Palermo, Genoa, and Milan.
In Jordan, BlueMed lands in the carrier-neutral tier-3 data centre operated by Aqaba Digital Hub which hosts Sparkle’s PoP since 2019 and is already connected to the company’s international network and Tier 1 global IP backbone Seabone.
In January the operator announced it had landed BlueMed in Bastia, Corsica. The Blue & Raman project was announced in 2020 and represents $400m of investment. Once complete, the cable will provide a different route through the Middle East outside Egypt, which currently has a submarine cable stranglehold with Telecom Egypt moving quickly on its own cables to protect its market position.
Pictured (front, right) Sparkle data centre director Nikos (Nikolaos) Konstantinidis at the landing.