Sparkle activates Rome PoP

Sparkle and Aruba announce the activation of the new Sparkle’s Point of Presence (PoP) at the Hyper Cloud Data Centre of Aruba, the largest data centre campus in Rome, to be inaugurated soon.

The agreement between Aruba and Sparkle reinforces Rome as a global connectivity hub between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia thanks to the connection with BlueMed, Sparkle's new cable that increases connectivity in the Mediterranean basin by linking various countries - including France, Greece, Israel and Italy - with landings in Rome, Genoa, Palermo and Golfo Aranci. BlueMed is an integral part of the Blue & Raman Submarine Cable Systems project. In partnership with Google and other operators, the project is set to establish a new digital infrastructure between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia with extension as far as India, and is among the first projects being implemented on the IMEC (India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor) set up at the G20 summit in September 2023.

Designed with an “open cable system” and “open landing station” architecture, BlueMed ensures maximum openness to other operators and the development of internet traffic interconnection ecosystems. With four fibre pairs and a capacity of over 25 Terabits per second (Tbps) per pair, BlueMed offers operators and businesses high-speed, high-performance international connections from Rome to all of Sparkle's destinations worldwide. Sparkle's new PoP was activated at Aruba's Hyper Cloud Data Centre (IT4), a technology campus located at the Tecnopolo Tiburtino, a district where more than 150 companies operate, ranging from aerospace to ICT, in an environment designed also to support the growth and development of new companies and start-ups. The data centre campus covers an area of 74,000 m² and, when fully operational, will include five independent data centres for a total of 30 MW of IT power, the first of which (DC-A) is already ANSI/TIA Rating 4 certified. Designed to the highest standards of resilience and infrastructure quality, the new hub will use renewable energy, cooling systems and highly efficient equipment.

“With the activation of the new PoP integrated with BlueMed, we intend to respond to the needs of companies and operators that require large international interconnection capacities,” said Enrico Bagnasco, CEO of Sparkle. “We bring Rome closer to the world's major connectivity exchange points thanks to a unique, low-latency route to Marseille and Palermo, integrated with the main submarine cables crossing the Mediterranean and other destinations in Sparkle's global network.”

Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba commented: “We share with Sparkle the aim of serving companies and operators, that need large capacities, with not only connectivity but also space and power within state-of-the-art data centres that are large enough to support even the most ambitious growth plans. Being able to host a Sparkle PoP, with the availability of BlueMed, is an important building block in the consolidation of our data centres as strategic assets at a national and European level, and is perfectly in line with our carrier neutral philosophy. This approach is designed to allow customers to enjoy, in maximum autonomy, extremely reliable and high-

performance internet connection solutions, and to foster the development of interconnections that benefit the entire ecosystem, making Rome an additional connectivity hub and an IT and cloud service delivery centre for the capital and all Central and Southern Italy.”

The new PoP - which already hosts important international players - adds to the four existing points of presence in Rome, increasing the capillarity of the metropolitan ring, a protected and redundant system fully integrated with Sparkle's Tier-1 global IP network “Seabone”. Network operators, ISPs, OTTs, content and application providers can benefit from the range of IP and data services offered by Sparkle, including DDoS Protection - that gives customers the option to self-protect their networks from attacks – and Virtual NAP – which provides virtual access to leading Internet Exchange Points (IXPs) without the need to build proprietary infrastructure.