Sparkle and VDPC agree Barracuda subsea cable landing for 2028

Sparkle and VDPC agree Barracuda subsea cable landing for 2028 is profiled by BTW Media because public-source evidence links it to internet infrastructure, governance, operational dependencies, or market visibility.

• Sparkle and Valencia Digital Port Connect (VDPC) have signed an agreement to land the Barracuda subsea cable at Sparkle’s Genoa Landing Platform in Italy. The system is set to be completed by 2028.
• Barracuda will be the first direct high-capacity, low-latency submarine route between Valencia and Genoa, featuring 12 fibre pairs each capable of 32 Tbps.

What happened

Sparkle, the international branch of Telecom Italia (TIM), a leading global connectivity service provider, has reached an agreement with Valencia Digital Port Connection Company (VDPC) to land the Barracuda submarine cable on Sparkle’s landing platform in Genoa, on the west coast of Italy. The Barracuda system aims to establish a 1070 kilometer digital link connecting Valencia, Spain and Genoa, Italy, providing direct, high-capacity, and low latency underwater connectivity.

According to the agreement, Sparkle will also acquire some infrastructure assets of the Barracuda system, as well as hosting space for the Valencia submarine cable landing station. The landing station is a neutral and scalable facility designed to host the Barracuda system as well as up to three other submarine cable systems. The project is expected to be completed within three years and commence operations in 2028. Barracuda’s open fiber optic architecture and massive capacity are designed to meet the future needs of operators, cloud service providers, and enterprise customers across Europe.

Also Read: Enterprise cloud and agentic AI move toward commercial reality
Also Read: AI embedded in 5G networks as SoftBank and Ericsson upgrade MIMO

Why it’s important

The Balakuda submarine cable agreement marks an important step in the expansion of digital infrastructure in the Mediterranean and Europe, adding a direct underwater channel between the two major connecting hubs. After landing in Genoa, the optical cable can be directly connected to Sparkle’s Genoa digital hub – a neutral hosting and interconnection point, which can be connected with the existing submarine optical cable, land network and Internet Exchange Point (IXP), thus consolidating Genoa’s position as a European digital traffic portal.

For VDPC, utilizing Sparkle’s existing landing infrastructure eliminates the need to build its own facilities in Italy, saving costs and complexity, and accelerating deployment speed. The agreement also enhances Sparkle’s business in the Iberian Peninsula and opens up emerging markets, including West Africa, by integrating the Balakuda submarine cable into Sparkle’s broader Mediterranean network layout.

The Balakuda submarine cable plan provides a capacity of 32Tbps per fiber, which is in line with the growing demand for data intensive services such as cloud computing, content distribution, and artificial intelligence workloads, highlighting the strategic value of new submarine infrastructure in connecting major European channels.