Sparkle has announced the expansion of its Nibble network to northern Europe.Confirmed during a meeting held at the Sicily Hub in Palermo between Sparkle CEO Elisabetta Romano and Undersecretary of State for Foreign Affairs Manlio Di Stefano, Nibble is Sparkle's European network based on software-defined technology.
Announced back in 2019, Nibble is built on a 6,500km photonic backbone, connecting Sparkle's two major subsea landing stations in Sicily - Palermo and Catania - with Milan, Marseille, Frankfurt and Paris to the West and with Athens, Istanbul and Tel Aviv to the East.
The network leverages different fibre-optic backbones for high reliability as well as DWDM technologies that deliver high-performance, low-latency and high speeds.
"Sparkle demonstrates once again its pioneering role in the global telecom Industry, reaffirming Italy’s leadership in Europe and in the Mediterranean," said Romano.
"Today, we can offer our customers instant activation of seamless, secure and ultra-reliable capacity services."
The latest announcement means that by July 2021, Nibble will extend by a further 6,300km to northern Europe, interconnecting London, Amsterdam and Brussels, bringing it to a total length of 12,800km.
During the meeting both di Stefano and Romano also visited the recently renovated Network Operating Centre (NOC), which also serves as a 24-hour supervision centre for the Nibble network and makes it the technological and intelligence hub of the Sparkle network.
“I am pleased to be the guest of an Italian excellence like Sparkle," said Di Stefano.
"We will continue to work with them and with the entire Italian ICT sector so that our country remains at the European and international forefront in this increasingly strategic area.”
Also due to its proximity to North Africa and the Middle East as well as its connections to all the international cables landing in Sicily, the Sicily Hub is the main exchange point for Internet traffic in the Mediterranean.
In related news, by 2022 the Sicily Hub will serve as the landing point of BlueMed, the new subsea cable across the Tyrrhenian Sea connecting Sicily with Genoa and Milan.
