In an exclusive interview with Telecom Review Asia, Giuseppe Valentino, EVP Marketing & Product Management Backbone & Infrastructure Solutions at Sparkle, outlined Sparkle’s submarine cable network. He also expanded on the company’s market position, the future challenges it may face, and how it will respond to new market needs. Valentino concluded the discussion by explaining how Sparkle will develop and transform its key markets in the Asia Pacific.
Can you give an overview of Sparkle's submarine cable network and market positioning?
Sparkle is an established player in the submarine cable industry, with an advanced proprietary fiber network of over 600,000 km across the globe and a higher asset concentration in Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and the Americas.
As the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, Sparkle offers a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services—capacity, IP transit, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice—to national and international carriers, OTTs, ISPs, media/content providers, and multinational enterprises.
Sparkle’s global IP Backbone, ‘Seabone’, ranks 4th worldwide (according to CAIDA) and is a leader in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Africa, and LATAM regions where Sparkle continues to invest in cable systems and hubs to create new digital corridors, expand capacity and facilitate the creation of gravitational interconnection ecosystems.
All infrastructural investments implementing state-of-the-art technologies are designed to improve the performance and security of services offered to customers and ensure diversification.
What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the subsea industry in the near future, and how is Sparkle responding to these new market needs?
The past two decades have been characterized by an explosion of data, internet, and digital services. In the next decade, traffic will continue to grow, requiring constant and consistent development of the international transmission network. This involves enabling global communications by upscaling needs (bandwidth demand), performance improvement (latency), and resiliency (where physical diversification is becoming more and more crucial). At Sparkle, we are very committed to following this development.
BlueMed is the most recent example of this strategy. With four fiber pairs and an initial design capacity of more than 25 Terabits per second (Tbps) per pair, BlueMed creates a digital highway throughout the Mediterranean Basin between Europe, the Middle East and Africa (together with Blue), and South Asia (a future extension with Raman), establishing a new reference in terms of diversification, scalability and latency on this route.
These new systems introduce diversification by following completely innovative physical and submarine paths compared to the existing and planned cables connecting Europe with the Middle East and Asia. The cable’s key European landing point is in Genoa. It then passes through the Strait of Messina (rather than through the Sicilian channel), and charts a path through Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, thus, establishing a new route between the Red and Mediterranean Sea.
The Tyrrhenian and the Middle-Eastern terrestrial sections are already in operation, while further Mediterranean landings and the full segment from Genoa to Aqaba are expected to be completed this year.
The extraordinary success of BlueMed encourages us to continue with this approach to the market by developing new cables—such as GreenMed, which will connect Italy through the Adriatic Sea to the Balkans and Central-Eastern Mediterranean countries—thus, opening a brand new and diversified intercontinental digital corridor.
What development prospects do you see on the Asian continent?
Asia, with its high economic and demographic growth rates, is a huge digital market with very attractive and varied opportunities for network operators.
The whole Middle East—South Asia—South/East Asia corridor will go through major development and transformation when it comes to backbone diversification and routing.
Sparkle is currently studying various new investments along that corridor and in some of its key markets, starting with the Indian subcontinent.
Continue Reading: The Vast Network Below: A Closer Look at Submarine Cable System Projects in Asia
