Sparkle announces that it will provide GÉANT with a 2,5 Gbps circuit from Marseille (France) to Annaba (Algeria), boosting the existing connectivity currently dedicated to Algeria's scientists, academics and students community. Sparkle has historically provided network solutions for GÉANT since 2002 to reinforce connectivity among education and research centers located in different countries including India, Tunisia, Malta, Morocco, Egypt, Cyprus, Greece. Currently Sparkle also provides GÉANT with 5Gbps connectivity to Brazil.
CERIST (Research Centre on Scientific and Technical Information), the organization that manages Algeria's national Research & Education network, ARN, has been part of GÉANT's network since 2004. ARN currently interconnects over 800,000 users at 124 research and academic institutions across Algeria. Through its interconnection to GÉANT's pan-European network, ARN enables researchers, academics and students in Algeria to participate in world-class international research and educational activities in areas such as high-energy physics and earth observation.
Today Sparkle owns and operates one of the largest global and technologically advanced network of about 570.000 km of fiber. Sparkle's global backbone also leverages on an extensive ownership in the main international submarine cables connecting Europe with South-East Asia (e.g.: SEA-ME-WE 3, SEA-ME-WE 4, IMEWE and the upcoming SEA-ME-WE 5) as well as in consortia and bilateral submarine cables in the Mediterranean basin (e.g. to Malta, Tunisia, Libya, Israel, Turkey). Sparkle's open ecosystem and rich marketplace Sicily Hub in Palermo, located in the middle of the Mediterranean basin, reinforces Sparkle's strategic role in serving the growing capacity demand between Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia Pacific.
Sicily Hub provides lowest latency to customers located in North Africa, the Mediterranean and the Middle East than any other European peering point because of its geographical position and it is connected to all cable landing stations in Sicily.
In the Americas Sparkle manages a state-of the-art regional proprietary fiber optic network which is part of its global backbone and that connects Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Panama, Peru, Venezuela and USA with the rest of the world. Sparkle is also the main investor in Seabras-1, the only submarine cable system to directly connect Sao Paulo, Brazil, to New York, USA, that will go in full operation by 2017.
