On the Internet submarine routes

Sep 12, 2023

With the laying of the new Blue Med submarine Internet cable and its landing at the Genoa switchboard, Liguria wants to become a fundamental hub for data traffic between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia

The cable layer ship "CS Recorder"

Genova – With the laying of the new Blue Med submarine Internet cable and its landing at the Genoa switchboard, Liguria wants to become a fundamental hub for data traffic between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.1) What is Blue Med?It's the undersea cable designed and financed by Sparkle, the Tim group's internet operator, owner of a fiber network that extends over 600,000 kilometers around the world. From Genoa it descends to Palermo with branches to Bastia, in Corsica, Golfo Aranci, in Sardinia, Pomezia, South of Rome, El Kala, in Algeria, Bizerte, in Tunisia, Tripoli and Derna, in Libya, Chania, in Crete, Marmaris , in Turkey, Yeroskipou, in Cyprus. It is part of the larger Blue Raman, created by Google in collaboration with Sparkle and other international operators, and which continues up to Mumbai, India, passing through Israel, Jordan, the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. South-west of Genoa, another branch of the Blue Med will reach Marseilles, again by sea, while north of the Ligurian capital, the cable continues by land to Milan, the Italian capital of data centers and Internet hub that connects Italy to Northern Europe.2) Who and when will lay the cable?The infrastructure will be built thanks to the "CS Recorder" cable-laying vessel of the French company Alcatel Submarine Networks, now owned by the Finnish Nokia. It is one of the big five companies in the world specializing in this type of business. The others are SubCom, Nec, Hmn Tech, Xtera. Together, they have a fleet of around 60 vessels. By the end of May, according to the statements of the CEO of Sparkle, Enrico Bagnasco, the Blue Med will reach Palermo. Between December 2023 and March 2024, according to Jayne Stowell, strategic negotiator at Google, in charge of managing the Blue Raman works, the cable will reach Mumbai.3) What is it made of and how thick is it?They are two cables to be precise, each in turn made up of four pairs of fiber optic cables, one for each direction of travel. The presence of several cables is a guarantee: if one is damaged, there is a reserve. Optical fiber is made up of glass filaments thinner than a hair. The four pairs of wires are enclosed in a tube the diameter of a garden hose. From Genoa the cable descends into the sea at Punta Vagno, in the Foce district, and, for the first 900 metres, proceeds inside a large 76 cm diameter cable duct, which supports eight smaller cable ducts each with a diameter of 14 cm. It serves to prevent the passage and anchorage of ships and boats from damaging it in the most dangerous area for the cable, the one near the port. Of the eight sub-cable ducts, two are occupied by Sparkle, the other six will be available, for hire, to anyone who wants to occupy them: "We are negotiating with two groups," Bagnasco said yesterday. Leaving the 900 meters of bore pipe, the cables continue lying in a trench dug with a depth of about one meter on the seabed. Each cable is made up of its four pairs of fibers and enclosed in a tube smaller than the sub-cable, the hose.4) How much does it cost? Who pays for it?Only the Genoese part, the bore pipe and the continuation by land up to the landing station in the Lagaccio district, has a cost estimated by sources close to Sparkle at eight million euros. The total cost of Blue Raman, according to unofficial estimates published in various newspapers and information sites and not denied, is 400 million dollars. The cost is divided between Google, which is the main financier of the work, Sparkle and the other partners in the company whose names are not yet known: "They will be soon, each of them will make press announcements in the coming months" explains Stowell.5) What are the performances?The most advanced cables currently in operation are capable of carrying 224 Terabits per second. The Blue Med and Blue Raman will transport, explains Stowell, "400 Terabits per second": 400 Terabits per second are equivalent, says Bagnasco, to "20 times the traffic that Italy produces today every day on the Internet".6) How many submarine cables are there in the world?According to the American research company Telegeography, there are 552 submarine Internet cables in operation for a total length of 1.4 million kilometres. Some cables are quite short, such as the 131 km CeltixConnect between the UK and Ireland. The Asia America Gateway, the longest, is 20 thousand kilometers. The Blue Raman will be close to 8,000 kilometres.7) Will the cable bring work to Genoa?One cable is not enough. At the moment, two other cables are under construction with a landing in Genoa: in addition to the Blue Med, 2Africa which is financed by the social media giant Meta-Facebook. A third cable, the India Europe Express, will arrive in Vado Ligure, Savona. Their presence should attract Internet service providers and other businesses that will want to take advantage of the large network capacity being made available. It will be the task of politics local create the conditions that make it convenient for businesses to invest in Genoa. Marseilles, which is the junction of 14 submarine cables, has succeeded and has grown economically because it has created an open data center where anyone, internet service providers, cloud service providers, content producers, can find a place, at advantageous conditions, to connect to the network.