TLC, Sparkle looks to South-East Asia

“We have been operating in India and Singapore for 15 years. The Europe-Asia route, among those with the highest traffic volume in the world, has growth estimates of 30-35% over the next three years. Singapore is in first place in the ranking of centers with the highest Internet traffic, and there is massive investment in the construction of data centers. South-East Asia has everything it takes to be one of the focus regions of our three-year plan” declared Enrico Maria Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle, international service provider of the TIM Group and main operator in the submarine cable sector, with a proprietary fiber optic network of over 600,000 km across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, America and Asia.

Having flown to Singapore to participate in Submarine Networks World, Bagnasco comments on the company strategies with Agi. “With its eleven thousand kilometres, the BlueRaman, which will connect Genoa to Mumbai, is completed in the Mediterranean part excluding the Israeli section. In 14 months we completed seven landings and at the end of August the laying of the Indian segment began, from Muscat in Oman to Mumbai. We expect to conclude by mid-2025. It is a clear statement of interest in the area, and the development of a Mumbai-Singapore corridor, an ideal BlueRaman link, is in our plans. We are in the business plan evaluation phase and have regular contacts with local operators, as far as Malaysia, where our network extends. One of our infrastructures could find space in the growing volume of trade between India and the countries of South-East Asia”.

But isn’t the route already well served?

Crowding is not a limit but an element of attraction, we want to be where there is traffic. The ecosystem and its resilience are important concepts. The competitor of one route is a potential customer of another. Furthermore, geopolitical threats have an impact on our activities. From piracy in the Red Sea to wars, escalating crises highlight the importance of alternative routes for large operators. The BlueRaman is the only cable that has a terrestrial route, crossing Jordan and Israel, a country to which we guarantee a large share of international traffic.”

Are you also looking at China?

“It’s not on our radar right now. I would say that all the operators and even many of the Chinese OTTs are already our customers for voice, mobile and data traffic. We do not operate directly in China and we do not have our own infrastructure on connections across the Atlantic and Pacific.”

You are among the industrial entities most present within the scope of the Mattei Plan of the Meloni government

“Yes, the institutional relationships are rich, we share the co-development lines of the project. In the Europe-Africa route we estimate enormous growth in traffic, of 35-40% in the next three years. For decades we have served the national telephone service of almost all African countries, first with telex, then with telegrams and finally with voice, mobile and data. It is a market that is home for us, especially North Africa, from Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt, with many bilateral cables. With the Equiano cable we opened in Nigeria and South Africa, we arrive in Djibouti with BlueRaman”.

A post-graduate Master’s degree on submarine fiber optic cables that you created with the University of Genoa and the SubOptic Foundation will start in 2025. Does this also strengthen the Italian critical mass in the sector? Is Italy catching up with France, which hosts the main European hub in the Mediterranean?

“I believe it is the first master of its kind. We care a lot about this project and the collaboration with Genoa, the city from which BlueRaman starts. It will necessarily be multidisciplinary, from engineering to management to international law, skills necessary in such a complex sector. To give an example, among the new projects, we announced GreenMed, the first cable that should bring traffic from Asia, Turkey and the Balkans across the Adriatic to Milan and then to the heart of Europe. Today 12 cables connect Europe to the Far East, all pass through the Sicilian Channel to reach Marseille, which has established itself as a primary hub in southern Europe over the last 15 years. This year Milan went from sixteenth to fourteenth place. Our projects will also contribute to strengthening its position and closing the gap with France.”