Last month, GO officially announced the launch of a €25 million investment project which will see Malta get a third submarine cable connecting the island to leading digital hubs in Europe, Africa and the Far East.

The project, called La Vallette, forms part of GO’s segment of ‘PEACE’ and has been set with a 30-month timeline, due to be completed and operational by February 2022. It consists of a submarine cable that will connect Malta to an international 12,000km cable system with multiple landing points, such as Pakistan, Kenya, Egypt, Cyprus, Djibouti, and France and extends to Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Effectively it will connect Malta to Western Europe, North Africa, Far East and beyond.

Currently, Malta’s connectivity depends on a set of cables by different operators that pass through only one maritime channel, between Malta and Sicily. This channel, Chief of GO Business Arthur Azzoaprdi explains, also lands in remote landing stations where further connectivity is required on land to connect to data-centre hubs in Milan and Frankfurt.

“Malta’s economy, and people’s lives and livelihoods both depend on connectivity, and unlike other resources, connectivity cannot be produced and stored for later use.”

He shares that GO’s La Vallette cable “goes through a completely different route, landing in a datacentre in France and providing new connectivity to Africa through Egypt and all the way to Asia.

“Essentially, this is a milestone moment in the history of Malta’s connectivity where we are offering businesses in particular additional redundancy to keep their operations going, but more importantly, peace of mind with the increased resiliency."

Asked how this project will benefit Malta, Mr Azzopardi said that the country’s telecom sector is among the most advanced in Europe, and the La Vallette project will enable Malta to capitalise on its technology and other international infrastructure to ensure the population has among the fastest data rates in Europe, thereby boosting emerging e-commerce opportunities.

“It will also enable Malta to secure low-latency access to over 160 connectivity providers along with multiple content, cloud, gaming and video streaming platforms.”