IONIAN

The most advanced fiber route connecting
Milan, Rome, Athens and Thessaloniki

The IONIAN system addresses the need for a diverse, state-of-art route between Western Europe and Greece.

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 route linking Athens and Thessaloniki up to Milan. 

IONIAN 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. It brings wholesale capacity, optical spectrum and dark fibre to Telecommunication Operators as well as Cloud and Content Providers.

IONIAN is neutral

We sell fiber infrastructure and transmission capacity wholesale. We do not address the retail market and we do not compete with our customers.

IONIAN is independent

It belongs to IslaLink, a reputed Submarine Operator with strong expertise in developing, building and operating submarine cables.

The IONIAN submarine cable

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.

Key Performances:

Athens - Milan, Round Trip Delay (RTD): 23 ms

Thessaloniki - Milan, Round Trip Delay (RTD): 25 ms

10G, 100G, 400G Wave and Spectrum Service

State-of-the-art technology C+L band configuration

Project calendar

  • 2020

    Landing points selected - completed

    Permit Feasibility Study – completed

  • 2021

    Desktop Study, Route Engineering – completed Financial closing – completed Supply Contract signed - completed Marine Survey - completed PIPs (Permits in Principle) applications - completed
  • 2022

    Cable Manufacturing completed
  • 2023

    Cable Main Lay and Post-lay Inspection and Burial 

    Landing Infrastructure Construction 

    System Commissioning and Final Test

    April: System is Ready for Service!!!

Services

Selected articles on the IONIAN Project