Exa to connect Italy’s data hubs with new Ultranet fibre route

Exa Infrastructure has signed an agreement with Ultranet to construct a 175 km fibre route connecting two of Italy’s key data hubs.
The Milan to Genoa project is designed to support high-performance data loads and also includes an extension of Exa’s Genoa Metro network to connect all existing Cable Landing Stations (CLS) - Lagaccio and Equinix - as well as Genoa Open CLS.

Upon completion, Exa plans to offer an open landing platform for subsea cables and five routes out of Genoa.

Steve Roberts, SVP of network investments and products at Exa Infrastructure, said: “This initiative aligns with Exa Infrastructure’s commitment to strengthening network resilience and expanding data transmission capacity, backed by its extensive experience in subsea and landing infrastructure.

“Partnering with Ultranet - a company with a proven track record in complex infrastructure projects - is a key component of this strategy.”

Milan is among Italy’s chief data hubs, buoyed by a slew of data centres and major submarine cable connections like BlueMed and 2Africa, enabling it to act as a crossroad for European and Mediterranean traffic.

Genoa, meanwhile, is a market that’s rapidly growing, supported by several subsea cable landing points and data centres including sites operated by the likes of Sparkle and Equinix.

To connect the two data hubs, Exa has partnered with Ultranet, which already manages a network of over 12,000 km across Italy.

Claudio Centofanti, chief commercial officer at HGM, Ultranet's parent company, said: “The majority of internet data traffic will flow through submarine cables, which are becoming a critical success factor.

“Telco operators will require increasingly advanced, cyber-secure technologies and infrastructure, seamlessly connected via P2P to data centres, edge data centres, and virtual data centres.”

Source: capacitymedia.com