IONIAN addresses the need for very large wholesale capacity (wavelength, spectrum and dark fiber) between Western Europe and Greece through a new system on a completely diverse route.
We sell fiber infrastructure and transmission capacity wholesale. We do not address the retail market and we do not compete with our customers.
It belongs to IslaLink, a reputed Submarine Operator with strong expertise in developing, building and operating submarine cables.
The IONIAN Submarine System connects Crotone, Italy, with Preveza, Greece. It is a 24 fiber pairs, unrepeated system with a total distance of 320 km.
The submarine route was selected so that the cable is laid mostly (more than 75% of the total) through deep waters (exceeding 1.000 meters depth) for maximum security against man-made hazards. Elsewhere, the cable has been buried to 1 m.
Given that there are no active submerged elements and that we avoid cable cuts, we expect that the lifetime of the system will exceed by far the standard 25 years one of submarine systems.
Capacity per fiber pair on the submarine segment exceeds 15 Tbps with existing technology, bringing the total potential capacity of the submarine cable to 360 Tbps.
The submarine infrastructure is complemented with two terrestrial fibre rings extending the system to the cities of Milan and Rome in Italy and Athens and Thessaloniki in Greece.
The IONIAN system offers a high capacity, robust fibre route linking Athens with Milan. This new connectivity supports the growth of ultra-broadband services in Greece and the development of Athens and Thessaloniki as regional hubs for cloud, content and telecommunication services. IONIAN brings wholesale capacity, optical spectrum and dark fibre to telecommunication operators and content providers under regular lease or IRU contracts for 10 to 25 years.
The system has been laid in January 2023 and is in operation since March 2023
Landing points selected - completed
Permit Feasibility Study – completed
Cable Main Lay and Post-lay Inspection and Burial
Landing Infrastructure Construction
System Commissioning and Final Test
April: System is Ready for Service!!!
What does it take to lay a submarine cable? Find the answer and more info in this short documentary that was premiered during the inauguration
On Sunday, January 22nd, after three days of uncertain wait due to bad weather and very rough sea, we could at last see the sun
In the previous post we learned about the methods and devices used for the different stages of the survey (in-shore, shallow waters, deep waters), here
Figure 1 – The Urbano Monti vessel (Elettra) ready to leave the port for Catania to survey the IONIAN route The Desktop Survey (DTS) has
We can easily imagine that, when planning the construction of a motorway, one needs to garner information about the features along the route: maps, topography,
A second post of the series describing in detail the IONIAN project, where we discuss the criteria that guided the design of the submarine route. You may find some interesting facts.
