Recent media reports indicate that Google has plans for a submarine cable connecting India and Italy via Israel. The cable will reach Israel in 2022.
The $400 million Blue-Raman cable is expected to start in Mumbai in India. It will then cross the Indian Ocean, after which it will travel overland. The endpoint of this section of the cable is expected to be the port of Aqaba in Jordan.
At Aqaba Raman will link with the Blue portion of the cable; this will cross Israel, go along the Mediterranean and connect to Genoa in Italy.
Telecom Italia’s Sparkle subsidiary is partnering with Google on the western portion of the cable. The Raman portion is being developed alongside Omani telecom company Omantel. Google has not released any official information on Blue-Raman.
By using Israel as the Middle Eastern interconnection point, the cable avoids Egypt, which is not only home to a significant number of cables – and a well-known point of failure for cables – but is also a very expensive area to cross. An additional bonus of Blue-Raman is that the cable is expected to lower the cost of Asia-to-Europe traffic.
As for the cable’s name, Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was an Indian physicist who authored ground-breaking works in the field of light scattering. His works earned him the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was the first Indian or Asian or non-white person to receive a Nobel Prize in any branch of science.
