English (UK) 
简体中文(中国) Sparkle announced Tuesday (February 28, 2023) the arrival of BlueMed cable in the Genoa Landing Platform, the city is about to become a key internet node between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, entering the map of the world's main internet hubs.
BlueMed is Sparkle's new cable that will connect Italy with France, Greece and Israel, with several other branches in the Mediterranean. It is part of the Blue Submarine Cable System project, built in partnership with Google and other operators with further extensions in the African and Asian continents.
With four fibre pairs and an initial design capacity of more than 25 Terabits per second (Tbps) per fiber pair, BlueMed will offer high-speed Internet connections and high-performance connectivity solutions to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), carriers, telecom operators, content providers, enterprises and institutions.
The deployment began on 31 January with the laying of the branch in Golfo Aranci, Sardinia, and continued on 9 February with the landing in Pomezia, on the coast of Rome. Thanks to BlueMed, Rome is once again on the intercontinental communication routes 100 years after the deployment of the Anzio - New York - Rio de Janeiro - Buenos Aires system by Italcable (the company precursor of Sparkle).
From Genoa, the BlueMed cable will continue southwards across the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Sicily Hub in Palermo - Sparkle's neutral data centre connected with eighteen international cables - from where it will proceed through the Strait of Messina and the Mediterranean Sea down to the Red Sea. The first section, Genoa-Golfo Aranci-Pomezia-Palermo, will be operational starting from May, while the extension to Corsica in Bastia will be completed in June 2023.
The cable landing in Genoa is currently underway off the port where the cable enters the Genoa Landing Platform, characterized by a multi-conductor submarine pipeline known as the "Bore Pipe", and reaches through a 6 km network of tunnels and underground galleries to the Genoa Lagaccio Open Landing Station, point of interconnection with other submarine cables and terrestrial national and continental networks.
The Genoa Landing Platform is designed to accommodate, in addition to Blue, up to six new cables safely and without impacting the environment and the city, thus positioning the Ligurian capital as a new traffic hub between Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe as well as a preferred route for future submarine systems seeking diversified access to the west European coast. The environmental sustainability, resilience and scalability of the infrastructure, in addition to its potential for diversification to other European hubs, were internationally recognised at the Global Carrier Awards (GCA) industry competition where Sparkle won the “Best Subsea Innovation” award.
In addition to BlueMed, multiple new subsea cables such as 2Africa, Medloop and Unitirreno are coming to Genoa. The city is about to become a key internet node between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, entering the map of the world's main internet hubs.
Equinix has built a carrier neutral data center in Genoa, Equinix GN1, which will be the termanal station for the 2Africa cable system. Equinix GN1 will have a direct fiber connections to Equinix ML5, Equinix flagship data center in Milan.
Genoa (Italian: Genova, Ligurian: Zena) is a historic port city in northern Italy, the capital of the Liguria region. Genoa derives its name from the word ‘knee’ according to the ancient Ligurian meaning, however the name is also claimed to derive from Latin Janua meaning ‘gate’ as this gateway to the seas led merchants to and from all over the globe.
With the Genoa Landing Platform, new data centers and multiple new genreration international subsea cables, Genoa is rising to be a true gateway of global digital ecosystem.
