Cable-laying works on the second submarine link to Sicily owned by GO, due to start tomorrow, have been postponed, the company said this evening.

The process of laying the cable between St Paul’s Bay and Mazara Del Vallo, south of Palermo, once it gets underway, will last around two weeks and the new cable system is expected to be functioning by early 2009.

GO (then Telemalta) was the first telecoms company in Malta to set up an international submarine cable link to Sicily. That cable, which will continue operating independently from the new cable, started operations in 1995 and is linked to the network of Italian provider Telecom Italia. GO’s first cable originates from St George’s Bay and lands in Catania.

“GO’s second cable infrastructure will be connected to one of the world’s major broadband backbones operated by Interoute. Thanks to Interoute’s extensive network all over Europe and beyond, GO’s resilience and flexibility in routing its international voice and data traffic via a multitude of options will be considerable – thus providing the value-added resources required by local and international customers,” GO CEO David Kay said at a press briefing.

GO’s Chief Technology Officer Ing. Joseph Bugeja and the Submarine Cable Project Manager Ing Mark Farrugia explained that the new cable will be 290 km long and will have four fibre pairs. The DWDM terminal equipment will initially be equipped for two wavelengths at 10 Gbit/s each. Compared to the 2.5 Gbit/s currently available on the existing cable, this will augment the available capacity eight times.

(See video provided by GO).