Spanish Port of Alicante to Get New Subsea Cable Landing Station
By Georgia Butler, Data Center Dynamics
April 6, 2023
The port of Alicante in Spain has given the go-ahead for its first subsea cable landing station (CLS).
The CLS will be constructed by Valencia Digital Port Connect as part of a cable project known as Barracuda.
The 2,500 sqm (26,900 sq ft), 1.5MW facility will have the capacity for up to four subsea cables and house a data center with 96 racks along with a meet-me room. The project has an initial construction budget of more than €10m ($11m).
Barracuda will be the Alicante-Valencia-Madrid leg of the Medusa cable, the longest subsea cable in the Mediterranean Sea which will connect nine countries in North Africa by 2024 and 2025.
Enrique Martin, Valencia Digital Port Connect CEO, said: “It is a giant step in achieving the final objective of obtaining the authorization. It allows us to be optimistic, despite the delays accumulated to date, with the execution deadlines to have the infrastructure in service for the first half of 2025.”
The subsea cable landing station will feature a technical ground floor and an upper floor for offices and will provide the Valencian Community with a hybrid network configuration including both 1,300km of terrestrial and 2,200km of submarine cables.
Now that approval has been granted, the promoter of telecommunications infrastructure in the area can begin receiving proposals with a more developed specification.
Pending administrative approvals, the company is anticipating that the project will bring 200 jobs to the area in the first phase of construction.
In total, the Medusa cable will span 8700km and will consist of 24 fiber pairs, and offer 480Tbps (20Tbs per fiber pair). Owner AFR-IX has said the project will require €326 million ($374m) of investment.
The Medusa system is also set to land at an Orange CLS in Marseille, France, and AFR-IX's recently completed Barcelona Cable Landing Station, which is also the landing point for the Meta-led 2Africa cable.