Savona, Italy

Savona, Italy: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Savona is a seaport and municipality on the Ligurian Sea, situated in the western part of the Liguria region in northern Italy and serving as the capital of the Province of Savona. As a landing point on Italy's Riviera coastline, it connects to two submarine cables that together span both short-range regional and long-distance intercontinental corridors. Italy as a whole hosts 37 submarine cables across 55 landing points, and Savona participates in this network with a pair of cables that reflect very different scales of connectivity.

The two cables landing at Savona are the Italy-Monaco system, a short regional link to the Principality of Monaco, and the India Europe Xpress (IEX), a long-haul cable connecting Italy to India and several countries in between. Together, these cables position Savona as both a Ligurian-coastal interconnection node and a terminus on one of the more significant Europe-to-Asia cable routes currently under development.

Cables Landing at Savona

India Europe Xpress (IEX) is a submarine cable system measuring 9,775 km in length, with a ready-for-service date of 2026. In addition to Savona, the cable lands in Djibouti, Egypt, France, Greece, India, and Oman. This routing establishes a direct intercontinental corridor linking the Indian subcontinent through the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, and the Mediterranean to southern Europe, with Savona serving as one of its Italian and broader European termini.

Italy-Monaco is a much shorter cable at 162 km, which entered service in 1995. It connects Savona to Monaco, providing a direct submarine link between the Italian Ligurian coast and the small principality to the northwest. This cable represents one of the earlier submarine cable deployments in Italy's national infrastructure, which dates its first cable to 1994.

Regional Context

Among Italy's 55 submarine cable landing points, Savona hosts 2 cables, placing it in the same tier as Civitavecchia and Lampedusa, and well below the more cable-dense hubs of Mazara del Vallo (9 cables), Genoa (7 cables), Catania (5 cables), and Bari (4 cables). Notably, Genoa - also a major Ligurian seaport - hosts significantly more cables, reinforcing the northwest Italian coast as an active zone for submarine cable infrastructure. Savona's two-cable count ranks it in the top 93% of Italian landing points by cable count.

Network Role

Savona functions as a two-cable landing point enabling both a proximate regional connection to Monaco via the Italy-Monaco cable and a far-reaching intercontinental link stretching through the Middle East and South Asia via IEX. The Italy-Monaco cable makes Savona a direct submarine gateway between the Ligurian coast and one of Europe's smallest yet well-connected sovereign states. The IEX system, once ready for service in 2026, will extend Savona's reach across multiple countries spanning three continents.

Rather than a multi-cable hub, Savona is a focused terminus where one legacy regional cable and one next-generation long-haul system converge. Its presence in the submarine cable graph illustrates how mid-sized coastal cities can serve dual roles - maintaining short-distance regional links while simultaneously anchoring intercontinental systems - contributing to the geographic diversity of Italy's broader submarine cable network.