The ELECTE Review
AI strategy and data intelligence for European SMEs. Each episode distills key insights from ELECTE's research and analysis — covering market shifts, AI adoption, regulatory developments, and the business decisions that matter. Published by ELECTE.
The ELECTE Review
Submarine Internet Cables: A Guide for Italian Companies
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Written and hosted by Fabio Lauria.
This is the Electi Review. Today, 95% of global internet traffic travels through undersea fiber optic cables on the ocean floor. Not through satellites, not through the cloud as an abstract concept, but through physical infrastructure that most Italian SMEs have never once considered when signing a contract with a cloud provider. Here is the core argument. When your company uses a cloud ERP, sends documents to a foreign client, or queries an AI platform, that data follows a specific physical path. It passes through submarine cables, landing stations, and continental backbones. The routes it takes, the hubs it crosses, and the entities that control those nodes are not neutral. They determine your performance, your continuity, and, critically, your data sovereignty. Italy's position in the Mediterranean is both an advantage and a structural vulnerability. Sicily alone is a key landing point connecting Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Geographic centrality does not mean control. A country can host major corridors without having any say over who owns the network, who manages it, or under which jurisdiction the data is handled. The ownership picture matters here. For years, submarine cable investment was dominated by telecoms. Today, major technology platforms have entered as co-funders and operators. Whoever owns the network controls the routes, the redundancy priorities, and the investment decisions. The end user sees a software interface. They do not see the power architecture beneath it. Satellites are not a substitute. Starlink and similar services work well for remote locations, mobile work sites, and tactical backup. They cannot replace undersea fiber for high-volume, latency-sensitive workloads, real-time analytics, VOIP, continuous cloud integrations. The backbone remains physical. What does this mean for procurement decisions? It means that choosing a cloud or SaaS provider is not just about price, features, and GDPR compliance. It means asking, where is data routed under normal conditions and during failover? Which backbones does the provider use? Which maritime choke points does traffic cross? Who decides recovery priorities if a landing station goes down? If you cannot answer those questions, you are not managing the risk. You are delegating it to infrastructure you cannot see. That's the review.
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