Submarine internet cables: the guide for Italian businesses

When a manager thinks about the Internet, they usually picture cloud, apps, dashboards, CRM, AI. Almost never do they picture seabeds, landing stations and geopolitical corridors. Yet that's exactly where the decisive point lies: about 95% of global data traffic passes through undersea cables, not through the abstract digital "space" we use every day (ICT Security Magazine).

For an Italian SME, this isn't a technical detail. It's a matter of operational risk, business continuity, compliance and strategic dependency. Every time your team uses a cloud ERP, sends documents to a foreign client, or queries an AI platform, data travels through precise physical infrastructure. It passes through hubs, crosses seas, lands at terrestrial stations, and depends on players who control routes, capacity and redundancy.

Understanding submarine internet cables means making visible the invisible infrastructure that underpins your business. It also means reading choices about cloud providers, SaaS, analytics and AI in a more mature way. Because choosing a digital service isn't just about buying features. It also means accepting a specific physical chain for your data.

Table of contents

• Where digital traffic actually travels
• Operational impact of submarine cables
• Control of infrastructure matters more than the visible service
• Why this changes SME decisions
• Where satellites work well
• Where fiber remains irreplaceable
• The Mediterranean as both a strength and a pressure point
• From technical risk to strategic risk
• Questions a manager should ask suppliers
• Operational checklist to reduce invisible dependency
• Conclusion: Make Your Business Future-Proof

The Physical Reality of the Internet and Submarine Cables

Where digital traffic actually travels

About 95% of international Internet traffic travels over submarine cables, not satellites. For an Italian SME, this fact changes the correct way to think about cloud, SaaS and remote collaboration: behind every digital service lies a physical chain of infrastructure, landing points, network operators and routing decisions.

The Internet works through fiber optic cables laid on the seabed, connected to terrestrial landing stations and then to continental backbones. In other words, email, backups, cloud CRM, ERP and video conferencing don't travel through an abstract space. They follow physical routes that can be congested, damaged, intercepted, or rerouted based on the interests of those who control the network.

For an entrepreneur, the point isn't the engineering itself. The point is understanding that performance, operational continuity and the actual location of data also depend on infrastructure the company doesn't see and almost never negotiates directly.

Company data doesn't just "appear" in the cloud. It travels through precise routes, with precise response times, vulnerabilities and dependencies.

Operational impact of submarine cables

From a technical standpoint, a modern submarine cable uses optical repeaters distributed along the route to maintain the signal over intercontinental distances. Laying the cable happens at great depths and requires years of planning, permits and investment. This explains why the global network doesn't change quickly and why some hubs carry more strategic weight than others (Wikipedia in Italian on submarine cables).

For a manager, the consequence is concrete. If a cloud application responds slowly, or if a supplier promises resilience without explaining which routes and landing points it relies on, the risk isn't just technical. It becomes an operational and contractual risk.

The major cables connecting Europe, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the United States concentrate capacity, investment and maintenance priorities. The Mediterranean, therefore, is a central corridor of the global network. Not just for geographic reasons, but because it connects markets, data centers and backbones that directly affect the access times of digital services used every day, including by Italian businesses.

For those using data platforms, AI, or applications distributed across multiple cloud regions, this translates into three direct effects:

• Transport capacity. More available bandwidth reduces the likelihood that traffic growth and bottlenecks will degrade performance.
• Latency. More direct routes improve response times for sensitive applications, such as real-time analytics, VoIP and collaborative environments.
• Redundancy. Continuity doesn't depend on software alone, but on the existence of alternative routes in case of failure or maintenance.

This reveals a point often overlooked by SMEs. Choosing a cloud provider isn't just about price, features or formal GDPR compliance. It's also about which networks that provider uses, which countries the data passes through, which hubs it depends on, and how exposed the client company remains to decisions made elsewhere, on technical or geopolitical grounds.

This is why it's worth reading cases like How Electe scales with Cloudflare. They help show the relationship between application architecture and network infrastructure. The perceived quality of a platform also depends on the physical chain and the parties governing it.

The useful conclusion for an SME is simple: if your data crosses global infrastructures you don't control, data sovereignty isn't decided only in the contract. It's also decided in the geography of networks.

Who Controls the Internet: the New Geography of Digital Power

For years many companies have thought of digital providers as application suppliers. Today this reading is incomplete. Whoever controls the deep infrastructures of connectivity exercises a much broader power than those who simply offer an interface or a service.

Controlling the infrastructure matters more than the visible service

If you own or co-finance the network that carries the data, you don't just control a technical asset. You control routes, redundancies, investment priorities and, in part, the operational quality of the services that travel over that infrastructure.

For an SME, this concentration has three implications that are often overlooked:

TopicWhat it means in practice

Data path

Data follows the networks and hubs chosen by the major infrastructure operators

Operational dependency

A reliable service also depends on the quality of the underlying physical chain

Power asymmetry

The end customer sees the software, but does not govern the deep structure that supports it

The strategic point is this: when you buy a cloud or SaaS service, you're not just purchasing application features. You're entering a geography of digital power already defined by others.

Why this changes SME decisions

Many businesses evaluate a provider using familiar criteria: price, ease of use, integrations, support. These criteria are necessary, but no longer sufficient. A more mature analysis must also include questions such as:

• Where is data routed between the user, the application and the data centre?
• Which nodes and landing stations are most critical in the service chain?
• Do alternative routes exist, or does resilience depend on just a few corridors?
• Who decides the infrastructure investments behind the service you're purchasing?

Practical rule: if you don't know which infrastructures an essential service depends on, you're not managing the risk. You're just delegating it.

Submarine internet cables are therefore not just a matter for telecommunications specialists. They are the hidden layer that explains why some digital ecosystems become dominant and why European companies, even small ones, can find themselves inside chains of dependency far deeper than they imagine.

Satellites and Fiber: Is Starlink Really an Alternative

The public debate often presents satellites as the “new Internet” capable of replacing cables. It's a convenient simplification, but for a manager it risks being misleading.

Where satellites work well

Satellite networks have real value in specific contexts. They are useful when coverage is needed in isolated areas, when terrestrial infrastructure is lacking, or as a continuity solution in particular scenarios. In these cases, their strength is accessibility.

For a company with offices in remote territories, mobile construction sites or difficult logistical contexts, satellite can be a smart component of connectivity. It can also make sense as backup in broader architectures.

Where fiber remains irreplaceable

When it comes to intensive workloads, however, the reasoning changes. Data centres, widespread cloud applications, real-time analytics, continuous exchanges between offices and platforms, AI models and large data volumes require a network base that satellite does not replace at a systemic scale.

The correct distinction is not between “old” and “new”. It's between complementary and substitutive. Satellites extend coverage. Submarine fiber holds up the backbone.

This matters in IT governance too. If your company uses tools that depend on fast, continuous data exchanges, you can't treat satellite as a general alternative to submarine internet cables. You can evaluate it as tactical support, not as the primary highway.

A useful way to read the topic is this:

• Satellite to cover exceptions, mobility, remote contexts, targeted backup.
• Fiber to sustain the day-to-day operational continuity of structured digital services.
• Hybrid architecture only if designed starting from real workloads, not from the moment's technology narrative.

In other words, the myth to avoid is simple: more media visibility does not mean greater infrastructural centrality.

The Geopolitics of Data and Submarine Cable Security

A dominant share of international data traffic still travels under the sea. That's why submarine cables are not just telecommunications infrastructure. They are strategic assets, points of geopolitical pressure and possible disruption factors for business activities that depend on cloud, SaaS platforms and distributed supply chains.

The Mediterranean as a point of strength and a point of pressure

For Italy, the Mediterranean concentrates a logistical advantage and a structural vulnerability. The peninsula connects Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. This position attracts investment in connectivity and data centers, but also increases exposure to incidents, military tensions, surveillance activities and sabotage on high-density routes.

One point matters more than others: geographic centrality does not equal control. A country can host relevant landing points and corridors without truly governing who owns the network, who manages it, where data is routed and under which jurisdiction the digital services that use it fall.

From technical risk to strategic risk

Analyses dedicated to cable security in the Mediterranean point to growing attention toward hybrid threats, mapping operations of submarine infrastructure and vulnerabilities of landing stations, the points where cables reach land and connect to terrestrial networks, as reported by ICT Security Magazine.

For an SME, the strategic shift is this. Connectivity risk doesn't arise only in the company router, in the supplier's data center or in the contract with the operator. It can arise much earlier, along international routes that the company doesn't see, doesn't oversee and often doesn't consider when evaluating suppliers.

If a cable route is damaged or a landing station suffers an outage, the effect isn't limited to the network. Access times to cloud services can worsen, ERP and CRM applications can slow down, latency in foreign offices can increase, and integrations with customers and suppliers can break down.

Here a rarely discussed point emerges. Choosing a cloud provider isn't only about price, features and support. It's also about the geography of dependencies. Where data transits, which backbones the services use, which maritime chokepoints they cross, and what geopolitical situation weighs on those corridors.

This shifts the topic from pure cybersecurity to operational sovereignty. If a company's critical processes depend on infrastructure concentrated in a few hubs or on operators exposed to tensions between states, geopolitical risk enters the balance sheet in the form of operational downtime, lost productivity and reduced ability to guarantee continuity to customers.

Companies updating their approach to cyber resilience can also link these vulnerabilities to broader security obligations and practices, as discussed in ELECTE's article on the NIS2 Directive.

The useful conclusion for a manager is concrete. Digital security doesn't just mean firewalls, backups and access control. It includes the map of physical and political dependencies that underpin the services the company purchases. Whoever ignores it delegates part of their strategic risk to invisible infrastructure.

Strategic Implications for Italian Companies

An SME can have cloud applications, remote backups and international suppliers, yet still remain exposed to just a few physical transit points. In Italy, a significant portion of submarine connections is concentrated at a handful of landing points and in the Mediterranean corridor, with Sicily playing a particular role in connections toward North Africa, the Middle East and the rest of Europe, as detailed by Geopop's map of submarine cables in Italy.

For a business owner, the point isn't geographic in an abstract sense. It's economic. If the services underpinning sales, logistics, support or accounting depend on concentrated routes, a technical incident, a fault or an international tension along those corridors can turn into application delays, unstable data access and slower response times toward customers and partners.

This changes how the choice of a cloud provider should be read. Comparing offers shouldn't stop at price, features and commercial support. It should include dependency on specific cloud regions, the redundancy of the backbones used by the provider, and the consistency between data residency, contractual obligations and the company's risk profile.

Data sovereignty, for an Italian SME, therefore comes down to an operational question. In the event of an infrastructure or political crisis, who decides where your data travels, with what recovery priorities, and under which jurisdiction it is managed? If the answer isn't clear, you're not just buying a service. You're accepting a dependency.

Questions a manager should ask suppliers

A serious vendor review should include at least these points:

• Location of processing
  Where does the data reside, and which network paths are used in normal cases and in failover cases?
• Geographic and network redundancy
  Is the service distributed across multiple areas and multiple operators, or does it concentrate traffic on a few hubs?
• Operational continuity
  Does the provider document service degradation scenarios, recovery times and emergency procedures?
• Subcontractor chain
  Which entities manage the data centers, transit providers and underlying network components?
• Data governance and compliance
  Are the policies on data residency, access and transfer compatible with customers, contracts and European requirements?

Here a useful distinction emerges. A supplier can be reliable at the application level while remaining opaque at the infrastructure level. For a company using ERP, analytics, AI or collaborative platforms, this opacity is an operational continuity risk, not a technical detail.

This is why digital procurement should work together with IT, finance and general management. Questions about RTO, RPO, failover and data localization aren't just useful for negotiating better terms. They serve to translate an invisible dependency into clauses, investment priorities and response plans. On this point, having clarity on how to set up data recovery strategies helps connect infrastructure risk to concrete business consequences.

The conclusion, for an SME, is simple. The cloud doesn't eliminate geography. It moves it inside the company's risk balance sheet.

Key Points and Concrete Actions for Your Company

The goal isn't to turn you into a telecommunications specialist. It's to build this awareness into procurement, risk management and digital governance.

Operational checklist to reduce invisible dependency

1. Map your critical services
   List CRM, ERP, email, analytics tools, AI platforms and document archives. Identify which processes would grind to a halt if international connectivity became unstable.
2. Classify your data by sensitivity
   Customer data, financial data, contractual documents and analytical outputs don't all carry the same weight. You need to know which data flows deserve stricter requirements on localization and continuity.
3. Ask vendors infrastructure questions
   Don't stop at SLAs and pricing. Ask where the data resides, what redundancies exist and how recovery is managed.
4. Review backup and recovery
   A digital resilience strategy requires clear objectives for recovery time and tolerable data loss. On this point, exploring data recovery strategies helps translate infrastructure risk into operational plans.
5. Bring the topic to leadership
   Submarine internet cables aren't a matter to leave to IT alone. They touch compliance, procurement, operations and leadership.

A good final test is simple: if you had to explain to your board tomorrow which physical dependencies your data runs through, could you do it clearly? If the answer is no, there's strategic work to start.

Conclusion: Future-Proof Your Business

The physical infrastructure of the Internet isn't a technical backdrop. It's part of your operating model. Submarine cables underpin global connectivity, concentrate infrastructural power, expose businesses to geographic bottlenecks, and turn the choice of a provider into a decision far more strategic than it seems.

For Italian businesses the lesson is clear. Being located in a country central to the Mediterranean offers opportunities, but it also demands attention. The continuity of digital services, data sovereignty and compliance don't depend only on the software you choose. They also depend on physical routes, landing points and the players who control the network.

The best-prepared companies don't wait for an incident to ask the right questions. They already integrate infrastructure, risk and governance into their technology choices today. That's how invisible complexity becomes a visible competitive advantage.

If you want to build a more informed data strategy, with attention to automation, governance and decision-making, discover ELECTE, an AI-powered data analytics platform for SMEs. It can help you turn complex data into operational insights, with a more mature approach to resilience and information value management.