Sparkle CEO: How the telco industry can regain centre stage

Enrico Bagnasco has a pivotal role at developing the future of the telecoms industry.

In addition to his leadership duties at Sparkle, he is chairman of the board at the Global Leadership Forum (GLF), one of Capacity’s sister brands. The GLF is designed to provide a single voice to the broader digital ecosystem and predominantly confronts connectivity issues and collaboration to achieve industry growth.

We spoke with Bagnasco at Capacity Europe 2025 to get his insights into how the telecoms industry is growing and changing and how Sparkle is poised to support that next chapter of sustainable growth.

What NaaS could mean for the telco industry

Speaking at Capacity Europe, Bagnasco made a case for networking as a service (NaaS) technology, a cloud-based model for providing network services. He explained how it means the physical and logical components of a network can be unbundled to sell as single pieces or re-bundle them in another arrangement.

“It’s a new way to sell services on top of the infrastructure,” he said. “Having the infrastructure remains very relevant to be able to do anything else. But this approach we think will fit more the needs of the cities, the needs of the enterprises and the needs of other carriers.”

When it comes to positive impact, Bagnasco explained how NaaS can help to reach higher levels of automation.

“Once you’re ready to employ NaaS, it means not just that you have to design your product in this architecture, but you also have to redesign your network architecture – your physical and logical infrastructure,” he said. “This means you have prepared your IT systems, inventory systems and management systems to deal with a NaaS approach.”

He added: “You’re probably then ready to sell the NaaS infrastructure through APIs, so the fact that you’re ready to work with the NaaS approach means you have cleaned up your IT stack.”

Developing infrastructure

Sparkle is a leading global service provider that offers a full range of infrastructure and global connectivity services, including capacity, IP, SD-WAN, colocation, IoT connectivity, roaming and voice.

The company is currently in a heavy cycle of investment for the last four years. After many years of organic investment, the company decided it was time to build new.

“We are currently running in parallel three large submarine cable projects, including its Blue and Raman cable systems, which have been in construction for the last three years and is now being deployed in the Mediterranean segment,” Bagnasco said. “We have Manta – the US, Mexico, Panama, Colombia region – which was launched in October 2024.”

Bagnasco added that Sparkle was also ready to launch a third project, GreenMed, which is a new corridor to connect the Middle East with Milan along the geographic routes.

“This will be the third submarine cable project, in addition to the last four years where we’ve also completed and renewed two data centres – one in Athens and one in Panama,” he said. “We have also started our operation at a Tel Aviv data centre, showing that we are in the process of building more sites.”

Building the future of the industry: Sparkle’s role

Currently in the process of the company’s sale completion after signing the deal last April, Sparkle is moving along its project plan.

Bagnasco noted: “I think new ownership will give Sparkle the right structure to continue infrastructure investment and expansion in our key regions, which are the corridor to connect Europe with North Africa in the east and India, and the corridor to connect North, Central and South America.

“I’m really looking forward to establishing even stronger footprints in these regions.”

One of the key areas Sparkle is looking at is AI. Demand for the technology is inevitably requiring more connectivity and new types of technologies services. As far as Sparkle is concerned, Bagnasco sees this as an opportunity for the telco industry to regain centre stage.

“Without very strong connectivity, there is no AI,” he said. “AI requires connectivity to transport data from one data centre to the other, both for training models and for AI inference.

“It will lead to maybe a new topology in the network, new routes to connect regions and countries that need to connect with data centres and probably new connectivity services with specific latency and bandwidth.”

He added: “This is a chance to get more value out of the AI wave than what we did in the past with the internet wave.”

Sparkle is currently involved in multiple ongoing projects to develop connectivity. Earlier this year, the company signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Algérie Télécom to develop a new subsea cable linking Italy and Algeria.

Updating us at Capacity Europe, Bagnasco said the work is progressing well, adding: “We are in a phase of discussing the technical configuration of the project.

“The connection between Africa and Italy is key for our market and we hope to complete the process in the next few months.”

GLF Code of Conduct: Industry impact

At the time of our interview with Bagnasco, the new GLF Code of Conduct had just been published. Setting an industry benchmark for carrier behaviour and best practices, signatories collaborate to ensure consistent action against fraud in telecommunications.

“The Code of Conduct is a very clear representation of the value that an organisation like the GLF can provide to the industry,” Bagnasco told Capacity. “It was a collective effort and Sparkle was a convinced supporter of this initiative since day one.”

He added: “Voice traffic remains high volume, and we want to protect the value of this market for as long as possible, so this is an excellent outcome.

“I can anticipate that there is willingness to extend a similar approach to mobile messaging. If we manage to address voice and mobile messaging, I think it would be a good achievement. Then we can look at what is required next.”

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