Country profile: Greece

Greece has much to offer as both a landing point and general connectivity hub for traffic entering and leaving Europe, particularly on the Middle East and Asia-bound routes. As well as heavy submarine cable construction (see below), development in recent years has focused on the data centre and interconnectivity angle. The Balkan Gate facility launched in Thessaloniki in 2022 to provide carrier-neutral hosting and interconnection capacity within Greece and up to the rest of southern Europe, with carrier RETN launching its first Greek PoP in the centre in early 2025.  

Further south, the island of Crete is also seeing connectivity growth, taking advantage of its location on the key Europe-Middle East Mediterranean transit route. Crete welcomed its first carrier-neutral facility in April 2025, the HER1 data centre launched by Digital Realty and Schneider Electric, and Lancom is also building a Balkan Gate facility on the island. Crete is particularly attractive for this kind of facility, with only short spurs from existing cables needed to connect to the centre and redistribute traffic from there.

As a many-islanded nation, it is no surprise that subsea cables form the backbone of Greek connectivity. There are currently 14 cables in operation either internally or connected to the country, and there are a further six under construction – providing increased traffic flows and a greater opportunity for data centre, internet exchange and terrestrial fibre buildout. Upcoming projects include a Saudi Arabia-Crete cable, the Greece-Israel ANDROMEDA cable, a newly-announced Greece-Turkey cable unveiled at MWC in 2025, and the EMC-WEST cables between Europe and Asia via Saudi Arabia.