Med-1, the company with the concession for laying the submarine cable from Israel to Europe, has completed the process of making agreements with the companies which are to lay the cable, and work in the Mediterranean is scheduled to begin within a few weeks, Med-1 general manager Amos Lasker said yesterday at a marketing conference for capacity on the cable, which took place in Eilat. The project will be named after its initiator, the late Gideon Lev.
Today (Wednesday) orders for capacity on the new cable were signed, to a value of $25-30 million. The investment in the project is estimated at $75 million. The owners will invest 25% of this from their own capital, and the balance will be in the form of a loan from Bank Hapoalim and Bank Leumi. This is one of the first submarine telecommunications cables to be set up jointly by telecommunications operators and private investors, and intended to make a profit. So far, most cables, including the two from Israel, have been laid by consortia of telecommunications operators, and have not been intended to make profits but only to pay back the investment.
Three national telephone companies are partners in the project, Bezeq of Israel (21.25%), Telecom Italia (18.25%), and CYTA of Cyprus (7.25%), together with a consortium of Israeli companies that includes Clalcom (18.25%), Globescom (8.25%), Aurec (8.25%), Telrad Holdings (9.25%), and Kama Communications (9.25%).
The marketing conference was attended by representatives of the foreign telecommunications companies operating in Israel, chief among them AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Worldcom, and European companies. From the Israeli side, representatives of the partners in the cable project participated, along with representatives of Bezeq International, Golden Lines, and Barak.
Negotiations over the laying of the cable are now being conducted with a consortium headed by Alcatel of France and Pirelli of Italy, and with a US company. The cable will be laid next year.
The optic cable will be 2,400 km long, and will connect Tel Aviv to Sicily. An extension will go to Cyprus. The cable will connect Israel to the Mediterranean submarine cable system, and, even in the first stage, it will increase Israel’s international telephone call capacity by a factor of ten.
Globescom is a Globes subsidiary.
"Network World" Awards RADGuard’s cIPro Encryption Product Blue Ribbon
The product received the highest rating among the Virtual Private Network protection products.
Globes’ correspondent
The prestigious periodical "Network World" has given Israeli company RADGuard’s cIPro encryption product its Blue Ribbon award. RADGuard is part of the RAD-Bynet group. The product received the highest rating among the Virtual Private Network (VPN) protection products. The high rating was awarded after a comparative review of VPN products from eleven companies from all over the world. The results of the review are published in the November 10 edition of the magazine.
Network World ranks the VPN products according to their features, their information filtering capability, management capability, performance, installation, and documentation.
RADGuard achieved the highest overall mark, and was also ranked first in the key management category.