EXA, IslaLink Team Up on IONIAN

We’re getting a bit more of an idea what direction EXA Infrastructure will be taking. This morning EXA and IslaLink announced an agreement centered on the planned IONIAN cable system between Italy and Greece.

IONIAN will connect Crotone, Italy with Preveza, Greece, adding diversity and new infrastructure between the two regions, with Crotone being a new landing location. Islalink says the cable will be ready for service in Q4 of this year.

Under the new partnership, EXA will supply the Crotone landing station with fiber connectivity up to Rome and Milan as well as a newly built fiber route between Bari and Crotone. EXA will become an anchor tenant on the new cable and will help maintain the cable landing station itself. They will leverage the connectivity over to Greece to improve their ability to serve Athens and Thessaloniki as well as on to the rest of the Balkans and to Turkey.

EXA is owned by I Squared Capital and was constructed out of the fiber infrastructure business they bought from GTT last year. That infrastructure derives from Interoute and Hibernia Networks, and it’s interesting that one of the first expansion projects they are promoting delves into subsea connectivity within the Mediterranean.

IslaLink also operates subsea cable routes between Spain and the Balearic Islands and Mallorca. Last month they did a similar deal with Grid Telecom for fiber connectivity on the Greek side of IONIAN.

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Categories: Fiber Networks · Undersea cables