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

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

GO's second submarine cable will be linking Malta to Italy via the pan-European network operated by Interoute, which connects 93 cities in 22 countries across over 56,000 cable kilometres of fibre. The submarine cable project is being referred to as the GO-1 Mediterranean Cable System.

The cable-laying ship that will be handling GO's second international link, Teliri, is just over 111 metres long with a loading capacity of 2,500 tonnes, and a maximum crew capacity of 68 people. The vessel has already loaded the 290 km length of cable required for this project.

"The new submarine cable link will have a totally different landing route and we will be utilising a different provider - Interoute. This project is of national importance and will provide resiliency and backup in such instances. As a result, GO will be the only telecoms provider in Malta to have two submarine cables to mainland Europe, and our cables will constitute 50 per cent of the four cables mentioned by the government which should be up and running by 2010," GO Chairman Sonny Portelli said.

GO's Chief Technology Officer Ing. Joseph Bugeja and the Submarine Cable Project Manager Ing Mark Farrugia explained that the new, second 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.

Mr Bugeja added that in Malta the cable will land at GO's existing premises at St. Paul's exchange whereas in Sicily it will land in a landing station provided by Interoute in Via Abetone at Mazara. From there the cable will be backhauled through Interoute's PoP in Mazara to the rest of their pan-European network. In Sicily the cable landing station will be operated and maintained by Interoute.

Interoute's network is the largest in Europe today, offering unparalleled homogeneity, reach and capacity. The company's fibre optic network consists of twelve rings connecting 93 cities in 22 countries across 56,000+ route kilometres of lit fibre and has the capacity to carry a petabit (a billion megabits per second) of traffic.