Sparkle Expands International Network Footprint to South Africa

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, is expanding its network footprint to South Africa with the opening of two new Points of Presence (PoPs) in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Fully integrated with Sparkle’s Tier-1 global IP backbone Seabone - which boasts extensive coverage in Africa - and the Equiano submarine cable connecting South Africa up to Nigeria and Portugal, the new PoPs enrich the capillary of Sparkle’s African backbone. This enhancement improves the global Internet and capacity solutions delivered by Sparkle in the continent and caters the huge data demand driven by new technologies, media platforms and cloud-based services that require omnipresent internet connectivity.

By connecting to Sparkle’s PoPs in Cape Town and Johannesburg, network providers, ISPs, OTTs, content and application providers will enjoy reliable, low latency Internet connectivity and capacity services. In addition, customers can benefit from the full range of Sparkle’s IP portfolio including DDoS Protection service - that grants customers the option to self-protect their networks from attacks – and Virtual NAP – which provides virtual access to leading Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) without the need to build proprietary infrastructure.

“Sparkle continues the expansion of its African network with targeted investments to support the continent's exceptional digital growth”, said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “With these new openings, which add to the existing PoPs in North Africa, Nigeria, South Africa and Djibouti, we consolidate our positioning as a leading global Tier-1 backbone and one of the main providers for international connectivity in Africa.”

Sparkle is TIM Group’s Global Operator, first international service provider in Italy and among the top worldwide, offering a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services – capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice - to national and international Carriers, OTTs, ISPs, Media/Content Providers, and multinational enterprises.

A major player in the submarine cable industry, Sparkle owns and manages a network of more than 600,000 km of fiber spanning from Europe to Africa and the Middle East, the Americas and Asia. Its sales force is active worldwide and distributed over 32 countries.