By Sami Zaptia
London, 17 July 2016:
The Libyan International Telecoms Company (LITC) announced that it has started repair work on the Silphium marine cable landing point in the eastern city of Derna last week.
The company says that the cable was deliberately targeted and was damaged on 29 October 2013
The Silphium marine cable started operating in June 2012 and is the first international telecoms link for the eastern region stretching across the Mediterranean for 425 kms to the Greek island of Crete.
The cable is wholly owned by LITC with a current capacity of 70 Gigabyte per second which can be expanded in the future to reach 1.2 Terabyte per second, LITC says.
LITC says that the marine cable will greatly increase communications efficiency and increase internet capacity in the eastern region, making up for service interruptions in other areas of Libya. It will also reduce the eastern region’s dependency on the western region for telecommunications capacity.
LITC is one of the seven main state-owned telecoms companies in Libya owned by the state-owned LIPTIC.
