Telecom Italia's submarine cable unit Sparkle has announced the laying of the BlueMed submarine cable to Crete, offering the Greek island high-speed Internet connections, Italy's foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.
BlueMed is Sparkle’s new cable connecting Italy to France, Greece and several countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea. Its arrival in Chania, strengthens Greece's position as a digital hub for Internet traffic in the Mediterranean.
With four fibre pairs and an initial capacity of more than 25 Terabits per second per pair, BlueMed "offers solutions to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), carriers, telecom operators, content providers, enterprises and institutions to support the growing needs and digital evolution of connected countries", according to the statement.
In Crete, BlueMed has reached Sparkle’s Data Centre in Chania, a cable landing station interconnected with the island’s land networks and Sparkle’s MedNautilus network, which has connections to mainland Greece, Turkey and Italy, the statement said.
Sparkle is developing the digital hub further to accommodate other submarine cable projects, including GreenMed, which 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," said the statement.
Laying began in 2023 with the main Tyrrhenian section from Genoa to Palermo and branches to Marseille and Bastia (France), Golfo Aranci (Sardinia) and Pomezia (Rome). From Palermo, the cable crossed the Strait of Messina to Crete, from where it will continue with further branches in the Mediterranean to Aqaba in Jordan.
Tyrrhenian and Middle Eastern land sections of the cable are already operational. Further layings in the Mediterranean and full operability from Genoa to Aqaba, Jordan are expected this year, the statement added.
Bluemed is part of the Blue- Raman fibre-optic communications cable systems being built in collaboration with Google - a major investor - and other operators that extend across the Middle East to Mumbai, India.
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