Retelit connects Sicily to AAE-1 subsea cable with 100G

The Italian carrier announced the milestone of extending its 100Gbps transport services to Sicily today. The start-up of the new network infrastructure supports the connection of the Bari AAE-1 landing station with the Open HUB MED (OHM) Carini data centre.

The telecommunications hub permits Retelit to speed up the development of services in Sicily and - thanks to the new connections - route data and Internet traffic from the East and Asia, through the submarine cables, not only on the fibre-optic transport backbones to the main European hubs, but also at Open HUB MED’s strategic exchange point.

Retelit can offer with these new connections transport services between the two regions of southern Italy and to Europe, as the only operator capable of providing multiple submarine and land restoration connectivity options between Bari and Palermo to Marseille, with the option to colocate customer equipment at the Open HUB MED data centre.

“This is an additional highly important step for our Italian development and growth, particularly considering that the market volumes of services provided to the Italian landing stations of internet transit, peering, cloud connect and security are estimated from 2019 at around €50 million, with annual growth rates of 40% until 2022,” stated Federico Protto, chief executive officer of Retelit.

“The arrival of Open HUB MED, a consortium of which we are also a member and a project which we have whole-heartedly supported since its creation, and the network and infrastructure investments, are the first stage of a wider project, which will see our presence in southern Italy established and extended.”

Protto told Capacity at ITW last month that the Italian carrier was talking to potential short-term acquisitions in its home market, and is also looking for ways to expand in Hong Kong and Singapore in the medium-term.

For the members of the AAE-1 Consortium, of which Retelit is only the Italian member, the new connections provide new routing and protection options thanks to the land sections from Bari now available to any European hub.

Back in December, Retelit announced that it had signed a commercial agreement with an Asian leading international telecommunications player, for the sale over 20 years of 1.1Tbps of capacity on the fibre-optic submarine cable (AAE-1), the system that connects Europe to Asia, through Bari.

The company said at the time: "With a capacity of 40Tbps and 100Gbps technology, the AAE-1 is the world’s fastest cable system and the first to offer the lowest level of point-to-point latency through an "express route" between Egypt and Thailand."

Valeria Rossi, chairperson of Open HUB MED, said: “The entry of the AAE-1 cable into Open HUB MED’s data centre is a milestone for our consortium and underscores the strategic nature of OHM. The positioning of Open HUB MED in Sicily and the technical and logistical features of its data centre located a few hundred meters from the Palermo coast establishes it as the best neutral landing station for new submarine cables in the heart of the Mediterranean.”

OHM is the first neutral and carrier-independent technology hub in the southern Mediterranean for the housing of the technology of operators, OTTs, businesses and the public sector, the exchange of internet traffic and the landing of submarine cables from North Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. The structure offers neutrality, reliability and security in line with the best sector standards.

At Capacity Middle East, Retelit announced an expansion of its network, unveiling 160Gbps of new capacity in Asia and in Europe. The carrier said at the time that the new routes are meant to support those already offered by the Italian carrier through its operative capacity on the 25,000km AAE-1 subsea cable, which spans three continents, running from Marseille to Hong Kong.