Good potential exists for a third, alternative submarine communications link from Europe to Malta, which could, in turn, service the North African rim and sub-Saharan markets, Investments, Industry and Information Technology Minister Austin Gatt said yesterday.
If Malta was to fully exploit today’s information and communication technologies, such as teleconferencing, teleworking, e-health and e-learning, the country could not continue relying solely on the two submarine data cables, one belonging to Maltacom and another to Vodafone Malta, which provided Malta with all its bandwidth, he said.
“At the moment Malta relies on just two main cables, but is that enough for today’s needs?” Dr Gatt asked while attending the launch of an Alcatel-Lucent branch office in Malta.
The fact that both existing cables land at the same spot in Sicily, which is not an international connectivity hub in itself, was another cause for concern, particularly in the eventuality of a natural disaster.
The government, he said, was looking at models through which it would assist, with its own resources, the building of a better international connectivity infrastructure, perhaps by financing the capital required and hooking up directly to an international connectivity hub.
Such an alternative link would allow private operators to focus on their activities and re-invest in delivering broadband to every Maltese household, while also providing an increase in the supply of broadband wholesaling in Malta – resulting in more competition and better quality services at cheaper prices.
Malta’s main technological challenge, he said, was to have not just unlimited connectivity, but also to make such connectivity available at reasonable prices. The Maltese market, Dr Gatt stressed, was small and the local private sector could not afford to enter into such a venture purely on its own steam.
There was, however, a possibility, with a company such as Alcatel, to develop a third submarine link to Malta from elsewhere in Europe, which could then in turn stretch to service the largely under-exploited African market.
Such a link, Dr Gatt commented, would first supply the North African rim market through a Malta-Libya or a Malta-Tunisia link, for example, which could then be extended to supply sub-Saharan Africa.
Alcatel-Lucent is unique in that it supplies both rival telecommunications companies, Maltacom and Vodafone Malta, and as a result holds an approximate 20 per cent share in the Maltese telecommunications market.
The French multinational is the unique provider of optics and DSL access for Maltacom. The company also built Vodafone Malta’s submarine cable to Sicily – a high capacity fibre optic link that has increased data bandwidth availability and international voice capacity.