Cable laying has begun on GO’s €25 million submarine telecoms cable, named LaValette, which will link Malta directly to France and Egypt.

This project, announced in July, forms part of the global PEACE System (Pakistan East Africa Connecting Europe) project, which consists of a submarine cable emulating the old oriental silk route, connecting countries across the globe on its way from Asia to France.

GO’s 55km stretch of cable is part of its National Connectivity Project, linking Malta to the main 3214km Mediterranean stretch between the south of France and Egypt, via Cyprus.

The move makes GO the first Maltese telecoms operator to have an additional redundancy for connectivity outside of Italy, and in fact this is said to be the first repeatered cable to be laid to the Maltese islands which will provide up to 16Tbps (Tera Bits per Second) and provide a lower round trip delay over what can be offered today to Marseille.

When launching the project, Nikhil Patil, GO’s CEO, hailed it as showing that GO has always “been on the right side of history when it comes to investing in Malta’s connectivity to the rest of the world.”

“Our purpose is to drive a digital Malta where no one is left behind. Over the last five years we have invested over €100 million in digital infrastructure in Malta to bring our purpose to life. We plan to invest at least another €100 million over the next five years,” he added.

On 4th August 2021, laying started in the Abu Talat (Egypt) area towards the Branching Unit of Cyprus. This operation was completed on 23rd August. From 25th August the segment to Cyprus was laid with post lay operations taking till 13th September. The segment towards the Malta branch unit was then laid with the full operation being completed on 17th October.

The Cable laying vessel then performed the cable lay towards the final splice, which basically joined the segment from Egypt to Malta to the segment towards France, with the final splice laid on the seabed on 17th November.

The cable lay in Golden bay is the final phase of the operation. Once the cable reaches land, it will be connected to the land equipment and tested to verify connectivity. The Cable will also be protected on shore and in the sea and will also be secured to the seabed to avoid damage.

End to end testing is estimated to begin in January or early February 2022 with full connectivity estimated to kick start in March 2022.