By Telecom Italia

Djibouti Telecom and TI Sparkle were able to quickly restore access to the Global Internet for all their customers via their Tier 1 IP POP located in Djibouti City, Republic of Djibouti, following the submarine cable outage of last February 17. The three cables that provide most internet connectivity between East Africa and Europe, EASSy, SMW3 and EIG, had been damaged by a cargo ship in the Red Sea between Djibouti and Port Sudan, generating a serious degrade of Internet service to and from East Africa.

Although many carriers in the region had lost connectivity completely, thanks to the solid architecture of the fully protected IP node in Djibouti,  TI Sparkle and Djibouti Telecom were able to guarantee service to their customers as well as to accommodate new demand from operators whose service was affected by the outage.

“The ambitious recovery plan that was executed in only 24 hours by our operations team in cooperation with our partner Djibouti Telecom is something we are very proud of as it demonstrates the solidity of our network as well as its flexibility” said Riccardo Delleani, CEO Telecom Italia Sparkle.

“The fully protected configuration of our IP POP allowed us not only to survive a triple cable failure but also to guarantee enough capacity to accommodate the demand of new customers for internet connectivity to Europe and North America” states M. Abdourahman Mohamed Hassan, Director General of Djibouti Telecom.

About Djibouti Telecom                                                                                                                                       

Established on September 1999 and sole Provider of telecommunication services in Djibouti, Djibouti Telecom offers of  a full range of services from fixed, Wireless services (GSM, CDMA), Corporate and wholesale IP/DATA to ADSL networks.

With its participation and ownership in number of submarine cable systems, Djibouti Telecom grows as a strong regional hub that connects east Africa with major telecommunications hubs in Europe, America, the Middle East and Asia. Its investment consists of five submarine cable systems (SeaMeWe3, Aden-Djibouti, Eassy, Seacom, EIG) with landing stations in Djibouti providing excellent diversity.

About Telecom Italia Sparkle

Telecom Italia Sparkle S.p.A. (TI Sparkle) is the wholly-owned Telecom Italia Group (NYSE:TI) subsidiary with the mission to develop and consolidate the Italian telco’s international services business.  As a global carrier, TI Sparkle offers a full range of voice, mobile data,  Internet protocol (IP) and bandwidth service solutions to fixed and mobile network carriers, Internet service providers (ISPs), Media and Content providers and to Multinational enterprises.