South of the Greek mainland is the country’s largest and most densely populated island, Crete.

Home to approximately 600,000 people, it is also about to house a new subsea cable landing station that will connect the people of Crete to some of the largest international cable systems.

This will mean faster, more reliable internet services for Vodafone customers on the island.

A new landing station

Based in Tympaki, Crete, the cable station will connect with the city of Heraklion via a new 30 kilometres (km) of cable tubes and 280km of new optical fibre, making Tympaki’s landing station an ideal and central hub for connectivity in the region.

This will be the first cable landing station in the south of the island, offering increased convenience and resilience for the island away from northern Crete where most submarine cables are concentrated.

The open subsea fibre optic cable landing station will be open to all projects and providers on a fair and equal basis and is expected to attract investment in more large cables that will connect Crete to other parts of the world.

At the same time, further opportunities will be generated for Vodafone partners and connectivity resellers in the region, enabling them to meet the demand, as the need to connect to the internet continues to grow.

2Africa reaches Crete

We have already reached an agreement for the landing of the 2Africa cable system, which is one of the most important submarine fibre optic infrastructures for global connectivity.

At 45,000km, 2Africa is one of the longest cable systems in the world. When completed it will connect Europe, the Middle East and Africa and provide more capacity than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today.

Already landing across three continents, 2Africa is completed in the Mediterranean and will be ready for service in most places from late 2023 through to being fully operational by late 2024.  The Crete landing is currently scheduled for completion by the second half of 2024.

In fact, just a couple of weeks ago we announced the official launch of the Mozambique landing.

Set to deliver the required internet capacity and reliability to large parts of Africa, it will also support the rapidly growing capacity demand in the Middle East and the deployment of 5G and fixed broadband, giving billions of people around the world access to reliable and high-quality connection.