With NaiTel and iLevant, Sparkle also plans to extend the GreenMed submarine cable system through Jordan to help create a new digital corridor linking Europe and Asia
Sparkle, TIM’s international arm, has had a busy few days. It signed three new capacity agreements to expand the reach of the European research and education network operator, GÉANT, across Europe, Africa and MENA. GÉANT operates the world’s largest network of its kind, interconnecting Europe’s national research and education networks (NRENs) and serving more than 50 million users across 10,000 scientific institutions in Europe.
GÉANT’s research involves more than 110 countries worldwide, providing backbone speeds of up to 1.6 Tbps. GÉANT and Sparkle began collaborating in the early 2010s.
The new routes include a link from the UK to Jordan. Sparkle says this will strengthen connectivity between the Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) at its UK PoP and SESAME, an international research facility.
Sparkle also added capacity to the link between France and Egypt which connects the Egyptian National Scientific and Technical Information Network (ENSTINET) to the wider ASREN community and to Europe via GÉANT. ENSTINET is a member of ASREN.
Both routes were procured and delivered under EUMEDplus, a project that is co-funded by the European Union.
African first
Sparkle has also delivered a new route to the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN), connecting its new Lagos Global Exchange Point (GXP) in Nigeria to the ZAOXI GXP in Cape Town.
This connects WACREN to the UbuntuNet Alliance’s Eastern and Southern African research and education community through two South African NRENs, SANReN and TENET. Sparkle said this marks the first-ever interconnection between Africa’s Regional Research and Education Networks within Africa.
Sparkle explained the new WACREN route was enabled by AfricaConnect3, which supports high-performance connectivity for academic and research communities across Africa. It is co-funded by the EU and implemented by WACREN, ASREN, the UbuntuNet Alliance and GÉANT.
“Researchers and students depend on fast, reliable connectivity to collaborate and access critical resources. Our role is to make this possible by working alongside our international research and education networking community,” added Bram Peeters, GÉANT’s Chief Network Services officer. “GÉANT is proud to support WACREN, the UbuntuNet Alliance and ASREN and collaborate with Sparkle to strengthen digital infrastructure around the world.
And another one…
Sparkel also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with NaiTel, the telecom arm of Aqaba Digital Hub and iLevant. They plan to extend the GreenMed submarine cable system through the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan to help create a new digital corridor linking Europe and Asia.
The parties are to integrate the GreenMed subsea cable with terrestrial fibre networks and regional interconnection platforms in Jordan. The strategy is to strengthen the resilience of connectivity across the Mediterranean and diversify the digital infrastructure connecting Europe and Asia which is threatened by warfare in the Middle East and state-sponsored sabotage of undersea cables.
Through the Aqaba Digital Hub (pictured above), Jordan is already a landing point for the BlueMed and the Blue & Raman submarine cable systems and is seen as a strategic terrestrial gateway on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC).
GreenMed has received funding from the European Commission under the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) programme.
