The Data Gateway between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean – Malta

ongoing

Currently there is no cable connecting France directly with the island of Malta. Moreover, there is a lack of direct connectivity between Malta and most digital ports in the Mediterranean, since from the five cables landing in Malta, four of them connect to Italy. The fifth cable, PEACE, is primarily designed for intercontinental connectivity, focusing on linking Europe with regions beyond the Mediterranean. This situation limits Malta’s options for direct, diverse routes to other Mediterranean countries, which could impact the resilience, speed and cost-efficiency of its international data exchange. This project aims to fill such gap and will deploy a submarine optic fibre of approximately 31km towards the Mediterranean country of Malta connecting it to the landing point of Marseille (France). It will complement the continental cables with local and regional solutions covering the Mediterranean Sea, providing robust networks to improve European connectivity and make it capable to support future demand while solving the lack of redundancy in the region. This new deployment of submarine cable will bring highspeed, low-latency and high-quality submarine network to one of the most important islands of the Mediterranean, intermeshing it with the principal data hub in the Mediterranean region, in Marseille. The project is encompassed in the next step of the MEDUSA global project aimed to create the biggest submarine network within the Mediterranean, connecting diverse data points within the same network, with state-of-the-art submarine telecommunication technology. Moreover, within the scope of the MEDUSA global project, all the Mediterranean landings will be intermeshed among them and to the most important Atlantic data ports in Europe, in Lisbon (Portugal).