The Minister for Gozo, Dr Anton Refalo writing about what he describes as “Weaving Gozo’s Threads of Independence,” has said: “Way back in 1978, economist John C. Grech published a book entitled Threads of Dependence, highlighting the dependence of Malta’s economy of the time upon foreign enterprises via the establishment of a strong textile industry. Grech prophesied – all too correctly as it eventually turned out – that the presence of the clothing industry in Malta could not be permanent.

Gozo had its fair share of this type of enterprise, firmly established at the Industrial Estate of Xewkija, which was a main pillar of its economy, providing Gozitans with stable employment with lucrative wages which enabled the building of many a commodious family home.

We now live in another millennium, and on a very different planet. Those money-minting factories disappeared long ago. Their threads are no longer viable. Incidentally, nowadays a completely different kind of thread is in fashion – the thread of execution in computer science, which is the smallest sequence of programmed instructions that can be managed independently by a scheduler, typically as part of an operating system.

Software companies and financial services institutions have replaced the industrial factories of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. These are dependent upon efficient and reliable telecommunication connectivity services. Indeed, today most enterprises within the knowledge-based industry rely to a considerable extent upon, and cannot operate without, reliable, high speed connectivity.

In the health sector, Gozo General Hospital is connected in this way to Mater Dei Hospital. Accurate data, including high definition medical images, is available in real time, enabling specialists and consultants at Mater Dei Hospital to immediately assess and report on, for instance, injuries suffered by patients treated on Gozo General Hospital radiology modalities.

This ensures immediate informed decisions regarding the most appropriate treatment or action to take and Ad exemplum, enables an assessment in seconds, whether a patient is in a condition to be safely flown to Mater Dei Hospital by helicopter or not.

The Government of Malta, through the Ministry for Gozo, has identified a major deficiency with respect to the telecommunication connectivity services currently extended to the island of Gozo by virtue of the fact that there are no or limited redundant facilities to the existing single fibre link.

This has a direct negative impact on both the residential and business Gozitan community, with future economic growth and potential investments being severely jeopardised due to the inherent single point of failure represented by a single high-bandwidth submarine link.

For whilst the existing link can provide enough bandwidth to handle all data sent from the hospitals, from industry, from government departments and residencies, alternative routes in case of failure of the single cable currently in operation are inexistent or inadequate by today’s – let alone future – connectivity requirements.

This handicap is one of the main reasons why for most of a quarter of a century until a few months ago, there was no new foreign direct investment in the island of Gozo.

The limited connectivity between Malta and Gozo will be addressed by deploying a second fibre optic cable system to render the connectivity between the two islands more resilient and at the same time augment the bandwidth carrying capacity to sustain future growth.

By the end of January, 2014, The Ministry for Gozo had completed the compilation of a technical and financial requirements document for the feasibility study for a second submarine fibre optic cable between Malta and Gozo.

In co-ordination with the Malta Communications Authority and Malta Enterprise, relevant terms of reference were incorporated in a European Union co-funded Malta Enterprise Call for Tenders (Study) for a Digital Hub in Malta and Gozo.

On the 20th June, 2014, Malta Enterprise issued a tender for a study about the setting up of a digital hub in Gozo, co-funded by the EU, costing an estimated €250,000. The closing date for this tender was the 31st of July, 2014.

This study will substantiate, and thereby abridge the time-frame, for the eventual request for EU funding and issuing of a tender for the deployment of the fibre optic cable itself during the 2014-2020 programming period.

Undoubtedly, the additional fibre strands of a second fibre optic cable link will constitute Gozo’s major threads of economic independence; its most significant permanent link with Malta and the rest of the world.”

Photograph: View of the Citadel and Gozo from Xaghra by Alain Salvary

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