Equinix and Vodafone have announced plans to build a new subsea hub in the northern Italian port of Genoa, to be called GN1. Under the deal, Vodafone will land the 2Africa cable system at Genoa and use Equinix's GN1 facility as a strategic interconnection point for the subsea cable system, with a connection on to Milan and the rest of Europe.
The partners said the EUR 1 billion 2Africa cable will be ready for service in 2023, a 37,000 km system circumnavigating the continent of Africa and directly connecting 16 countries in Africa to Europe and the Middle East, with a design capacity of up to 180 Tbps on key segments. To facilitate interconnection, GN1 will have a direct fibre connection to ML5, the soon-to-be opened Equinix flagship data centre in Milan.
The newly-announced GN1 hub will be Genoa's first carrier-neutral data centre, offering customers secure colocation and interconnection services, as well as the ability to directly tap into Equinix's digital ecosystems and colocation facilities in Milan. It will provide a capacity of 150 cabinet equivalents, and colocation space of around 560 square meters.
