Sparkle and OEC will recycle 22 thousand km of submarine cables

Telecom Italia (TIM)’s submarine cable division has signed an agreement with Oceanic Environmental Cables (OEC) to recover and recycle thousands of kilometers of unused submarine telecom cables, Sparkle said.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. OEC specializes in the recycling and restoration of decommissioned cable infrastructure. According to Sparkle, the agreement will “save” more than 35 thousand tons of CO2 emissions due to the reuse of materials. However, not everyone is happy about the possibility of using old cables. In November, AT&T almost scandalously removed about 50 tons of toxic lead cable from the bottom of Lake Tahoe.

The decommissioned Sparkle cables will be recovered from the bottom and delivered to OEC and its partners. There, the cables will be disassembled, separated and cleaned, and the individual components – fibre, copper, steel, aluminum and HDPE/LDPE plastic – will be processed into high-quality pellets that can be used in the production of new cables. Sparkle said it is proud to be one of the first cable infrastructure operators to introduce an innovative initiative to reduce its environmental impact.

Image source: Telecom Italia Sparkle

Today the company manages more than 600 thousand km of cables connecting the countries of Europe and America. The Italian government is now seeking to bring Sparkle into public ownership as part of a plan to gain control of strategic assets. Not long ago, France did much the same thing, buying Alcatel Submarine Networks from Nokia. The Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) and Retelit, a company controlled by the Asterion fund, offered €700 million ($724 million) for Sparkle, DataCenter Dynamics reports.