NEWS | Wednesday, 23 January 2008

GO to lay down a second submarine data cable between Malta and Italy

GO p.l.c. has announced a multi million euro investment in a second submarine cable linking Malta to Italy via Interoute’s pan-European network which connects 75 cities in 22 countries across 54,000 cable kilometres of fibre. The submarine cable project will be completed by Q4 2008 and is being entrusted to an international consortium made up of Alcatel-Lucent and Elettra.
Speaking during the launch last Friday, Minister for Investments, Industry and Information Technology Austin Gatt said: “What is happening today is very significant. This is one of the most fundamental building blocks in the edifice we’re calling ‘The Smart Island’.
Gatt said that the Government has announced and developed fiscal incentives to private telecoms operators to help them invest in our connectivity. These incentives are open to all operators.
He said this event marked an important milestone in the realisation of the National ICT Strategy ‘The Smart Island’. A few days before Christmas, the Government had published its own strategy for this and the following two years.
The Government now has started to implement the strategy. First it started to offer ‘Blueskies’, an effort to offer heavily subsidised broadband to Maltese households still without it.
He added that this event was another confirmation, if any was needed, of the wisdom of the Government’s privatisation policy. He claimed that a senior spokesman for the Opposition articulated its policy on privatisation in these terms:
“By privatising Maltacom the Government is letting go of the reins of the country. It is disposing of what is essentially national and essential. It is losing for the country the chance to do what is best for us.”
“Well this was proved wrong. Within 10 days the new owners of Malta Freeport announced they will be increasing by a third their footprint, the business and the workforce of our southern harbour, the new majority shareholders of Maltapost announced they will be transforming our postal company into a new low-cost banker and now the new majority of GO are announcing they are doubling their international connectivity infrastructure. Privatisation has given our country the real chance to do what is best from us,” he insisted.
Gatt said that this country can really become the ‘Smart Island’. “It will come through the collective realisation of the ambitious vision the Government has set for the country.
“It will create a prosperous information economy that generates new jobs and wealth to all members of our community. It will create an inclusive information society that relieves the burden of existing inequalities and creates an open democratic society with a more efficient and more transparent administration and greater public participation.”
On his part, GO Chairman Sonny Portelli said that the new submarine cable would augment GO’s international capacity to cater for projected demands for broadband services which will be increasing in the coming future, especially with projects such as SmartCity.
Moreover, it will give GO the possibility to procure broadband capacity from Interoute. In practical terms, this means that GO would now possess world class connectivity, which in turn would allow the company to provide services to the most demanding clients.
GO Director Deepak Padmanabhan said that this multimillion euro investment was a vote of confidence from GO’s majority shareholder in both GO and the Maltese Islands.
Once the new cable is deployed, Malta will have a first-class communication backbone which serves the needs of the islands for the present and the future. “This is an important step to achieve the Government’s goal of making Malta a centre of excellence in ICT,” he said.
GO’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) David Kay explained that the cable will link St. Paul’s Bay in Malta to Mazara del Vallo in Sicily. The physical cable route will be completely different to that of the existing cable that links St George’s bay to Catania. He said that the cable will be 290 km long and will have four fibre pairs. The new cable will augment the available capacity nine times.
Renzo Ravaglia from Interoute said that the company was pleased to be part of this historic venture which will open up opportunities for Malta in the European Union (EU), North America, North Africa, the Middle East and beyond. Malta will be linked directly into Europe’s largest communications platform.
Alcatel-Lucent’s Andreas Schneider said that the company was committed to address the customer’s needs for flexibility and reliability, which are key for the cost-effective delivery of innovative services.
“We are delivering the most advanced submarine technology to meet GO’s existing and new services demands, as well as to keep pace with the fast growing broadband adoption rates of its end-users,” he said.