EXA Infrastructure's role
EXA Infrastructure is the majority shareholder in the joint venture, and TAE integrates directly into our global network and product portfolio.
Network / TRANS-ADRIATIC EXPRESS (Tae)
A new corridor from Turkey into western Europe.
A direct fibre route from the Greek and Turkish border to Marseille, laid alongside a live gas pipeline and connecting Istanbul, Sofia, Athens, Tirana and Milan on the way.
4,500km
network perimeter
25 Tbps
per fibre pair
6
countries
36
optical fibre pairs
12
ILA shelters
106km
Adriatic subsea crossing
800G
capable, on Infinera ICE6
<0.19 dB/km
G.652D fibre
THE MODEL
A unique joint venture with Trans Adriatic Pipeline.
TAE is a joint venture between EXA Infrastructure and Trans Adriatic Pipeline AG (TAP), owner of the gas pipeline carrying energy from the Caspian to southern Italy. Two fibre cables run alongside the pipeline, plus a subsea crossing under the Adriatic.
Engineering and operations
Support and 24/7 operations run from our NOCs in Dublin and Pune, the same team managing the rest of the network. There's no separate support structure for TAE, and no different operational standard.
THE PIPELINE ADVANTAGE
The pipeline is the protection.
Reliability
The fibre is buried 1 to 10m alongside critical national infrastructure, with strict no-dig and no-build zones either side. Protection that a normal terrestrial route can't be given retrospectively.
Latency
The pipeline takes the shortest economic route, which means 39 directional-drill river crossings and three mountain micro tunnels rather than detours around them.
Diversity
An independent corridor from Istanbul into western Europe, away from the Mediterranean subsea systems everything else shares.
THE ROUTE
Every segment, and what runs on it.
TAE is a joint venture between EXA Infrastructure and Trans Adriatic Pipeline AG, built alongside TAP's gas pipeline to create a direct fibre route between Italy, Greece and Turkey.
SERVICES
What you can actually take on this route.
Wavelengths
10G, 100G and 400G on owned infrastructure, provisioned to the tier you need today with room to step up as demand grows.
Spectrum
Optical spectrum for running your own equipment on the route rather than taking a managed service.
Dark Fibre
Latest-generation low-loss G.652D fibre pairs, for building and managing your own layer on top.
ILA Colocation
Space at in-line amplifier sites along the route, for operators who need to sit close to the physical path itself.
Problems we solve
Typical routing problems, and how TAE answers them.
Built for backbone: space at cable landing stations, amplifier sites and PoPs on the network, designed around the equipment that runs it.
Most routes to Turkey share common failure points at the Bulgarian border, making diversity hard to achieve
TAE uses a unique path via Greece into Turkey, meaning no shared failure points with other cables.
Some networks in the Balkan region can be unreliable, with frequent fibre breaks affecting service reliability
TAE cables are deeply buried next to the highly secure Trans Adriatic Gas Pipeline, providing 100% uptime over the past five years.
The overlap map shows you exactly where we already are, and how fast we can extend to where you’re building next.
TAE provides high availability into Turkey, enabling onward connectivity to the Persian Gulf via Iraq.
What comes next
Built for the routes that don't exist yet.
Future subsea systems landing in Crete and Athens will look for onward routes to Milan, Sofia and Istanbul. TAE is built to be that onward corridor, as Milan's role as a hub keeps growing.
