The partnership will boost Fastweb’s – which has over 2.4 million customers – access to major subsea cable systems that come into the connectivity hub of Sicily. Several major subsea cable systems land in Sicily, offering onward connectivity from Europe to the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The agreement sees the two telcos delivering international capacity services for new and existing customers in the Middle East, Africa and Asia who are looking for routes to Europe. It will also see Sicily act as an additional entry point into Europe, offering a strategic alternative to Marseille.
BICS and Fastweb will provide customers end-to-end backhaul services with significantly reduced latency and diverse paths, they claimed in a statement.
Fabrizio Casati, chief wholesale officer at Fastweb, stated: “We are highly satisfied with this partnership agreement with such a major international player as BICS, which highlights the strength of our network and the solid nature of our strategy.
“The partnership with BICS adds further value to our investments, following on from our participation in the Open Hub Med consortium in Sicily and the development of an innovative and future-proof Flexible Optical Network all along Italy.”
The solution designed by the two companies extends BICS’ Pan European Network through Fastweb’s fibre optic, high speed, low latency, single hop backbone in Italy, connecting international submarine cable system routes.
BICS has more than 120 access points-of-presence worldwide, offering capacities of multiple 100 GB, plus participation in 20 submarine cables (including EIG, SeMeWe-3, SeMeWe-4, SAT-3/WACS, SAFE)
Last year, BICS deployed a third fibre route between Marseille and Paris as part of an attempt to reduce latency and protect inbound voice and data traffic from Asia and the Middle East. It also acquired TeleSign – a US company offering two-factor authentication services – in a move to transform into an end-to-end communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS).
“BICS has always been committed to providing its customers with first-class connectivity, and this partnership confirms our position as a bridging partner for operators expanding their capacity provision throughout Europe,” said Daniel Kurgan, chief executive officer at BICS.
