Subsea Cable | Sparkle, Unitirreno Select Genoa Landing Platform

Sparkle, the first international service provider in Italy and among the top global operators, has signed an agreement with Unitirreno - a partnership between Unidata, Italian TLC operator and ISP, and industry experts - for the landing of its new subsea cable system in Sparkle’s Genoa Landing Platform.

The Unitirreno Submarine Cable System will cross the Tyrrhenian Sea from Genoa to Mazara del Vallo (Sicily) with branches to Olbia (Sardinia), Rome and more in the future. Designed with an “open cable system” architecture and with a total capacity of 480 Tbps (Terabits per second), the cable will cover around 1,030km and is currently expected to be ready for service by Q2 of 2025.

Under the agreement, Unitirreno will use Sparkle's Genoa Landing Platform, a scalable infrastructure designed to offer a turnkey, highly resilient and secure submarine cable landing on the Western European coastline. Through this infrastructure, already used by the BlueMed and BlueRaman systems, Unitirreno will reach the Genoa Digital Hub in Lagaccio, an open and neutral colocation facility and interconnection point with other submarine cables and European terrestrial networks, as well as Internet Exchange Points like Ge-DIX which is already operational in the facility.

By landing in Genoa, Unitirreno gains quick access to major European hubs without impacting the city and the environment and saving the cost, time and administrative complexities typically needed to set up a proprietary landing infrastructure.

"We are proud to have been chosen by Unitirreno as their landing partner on the Western European coast”, said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “This agreement further enriches the Ligurian digital ecosystem and confirms our Genoa Landing Platform as a reference alternative for more submarine cables seeking diversified entry into Europe.”

“We are very pleased with the agreement with Sparkle, which represents not only a guarantee in terms of reliability and security but also an opportunity to explore further collaborations in the future. We are convinced that this agreement will make a significant contribution to the development of an increasingly advanced interconnection system, improving the quality of services and paving the way for new innovations” said Renato Brunetti, President and CEO of Unidata.