For more than a decade, the route has been a pressure point for traffic moving between southern Europe, North Africa and core continental hubs.

The latest upgrade is designed to relieve that bottleneck by adding fibre capacity and creating a fully diverse alternative path.

Exa was the first operator to deliver new low loss G.652D fibre between Paris and Marseille in 2024 and will now increase fibre count on the route in response to what it describes as unprecedented demand for subsea cable access.

In parallel the operator is building a geographically separate Paris to Dijon to Marseille path, giving customers two modern low latency and scalable routes on the same corridor.

The announcement comes shortly after Exa completed a €1.3 billion refinancing that strengthened its balance sheet and accelerated network expansion plans across Europe.

The company says the Marseille initiative shows how fresh capital is being deployed to remove historic chokepoints and increase the reach and performance of strategic long haul assets.

“Enhancing network diversity and removing long-standing constraints like the Marseille–Paris corridor is central to our mission of delivering a more resilient and scalable digital infrastructure for Europe,” said Steve Roberts, SVP Network Investments and Products at Exa Infrastructure.

“This investment directly supports the needs of hyperscalers, AI and HPC providers, and enterprise customers who depend on high-performance, low-latency connectivity.”

Exa says the development forms part of a wider programme to open capacity on major European routes and reinforce its position as a leading independent infrastructure operator serving the continent’s fast growing data economy.

RELATED STORIES

EXA Infrastructure secures €1.3bn refinancing and expansion facility

Exa activates Ashburn–Atlanta route with Ciena’s optical solutions