The IONIAN system was designed to improve the performance, quality, and robustness of Greece's international connectivity and to support the development of Greece into European data hub.
"With IONIAN, we want to contribute to Greece's telecommunications development and to positioning the country as a regional telecommunications hub," said Esther Garcés, CEO of Islalink.
"Our state-of-the-art submarine cable brings an enormous growth potential. Equally important, IONIAN has been designed to be totally diverse from existing cables and a most safe route so it brings additional security to Greece’s international network.”
The IONIAN features a subsea cable connects the Italian city of Crotone with that of Preveza in Greece, spanning 330km in length and features 24 fibre pairs, each of which can transmit up to 15Tbps, bringing the total potential capacity to 360Tbps.
The subsea cable is then interconnected with two terrestrial fibre rings, offing both the C and L band optical channels, connecting Athens and Thessaloniki with Milan and Rome.
The IONIAN system aims to meet the demands for ultra-high bandwidth between Greece and Western Europe and to increase the resiliency of the international telecoms network. The route traverses mostly through the deep waters of the Ionian Sea and was selected to maximise security against man-made hazards.
Much of the demand is driven by recent rise in investments in high-speed connectivity infrastructure and data centres in Greece, resulting in increased demand for more bandwidth and diverse routes.
In 2021, Grid Telecom and Islalink entered into an agreement to deliver a terrestrial backbone fibre extension of the IONIAN subsea cable.
By 2022, EXA Infrastructure was named as the key landing and terrestrial services partner in Italy and anchor tenant on the IONIAN cable system.
