“We are very proud of this new initiative that strengthens Sparkle’s positioning in the Middle East” says Mario Di Mauro, CEO of Sparkle. “The new Aqaba PoP marks a further step towards the consolidation of our company as leading network provider also beyond the Mediterranean basin, providing its customers premium diversified connectivity solutions.”
Located by the Red Sea, Aqaba has the potential to become a digital hub in the Middle East region, using Naitel’s open data centre. This in combination with Sparkle’s international state-of-the-art network and Tier 1 global IP backbone Seabone, is set to deliver top tier connectivity and IP Transit to the Jordanian market as well as to neighbouring countries.
Both parties will use their fully interconnected backbones to provide a new link that is a shorter and alternative route from the Balkans, with access options from Ljubljana, Sofia and Istanbul to Milan and other major hubs in Western Europe.
“BlueMed will offer a new route from Sicily to Milan, one of the leading IP gravity hubs in Europe, offering route diversity and adding additional resiliency and scalability to the traditional terrestrial Italian paths,” said Valentino. “The Tyrrhenian Sea offers a much shorter path that translates into an impressive performance improvement, with the latency between Palermo and Milan cut by 50%.”
