Formed during Mobile World Congress 2022, the deal was signed by Adel Hamed, managing director and CEO of Telecom Egypt, and Norman Albi, CEO of AFR-IX Telecom and the Medusa Submarine Cable System.
“We are pleased to introduce additional connectivity to Egypt through the Medusa submarine cable system, which will increase diversity in the Mediterranean basin. We believe this agreement will be the beginning of more upcoming collaborations with AFR-IX telecom,” said Hamed.
Announced in January of this year, Medusa is an 8,760km subsea cable system set to deliver 24 fibre pairs and a capacity of 20Tbps per fibre pair. With 16 landing points, the system will connect the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, connecting Portugal, Morocco, Spain, Algeria, France, Tunisia, Italy, Greece and Egypt. System will also adopt an open cable standard meaning that not only can anyone acquire capacity on the cable but it "can be connected to any type of technology or brand", according to Albi.
February saw Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) named as the vendor supplier of the cable, the system will feature DAS (Distributed Acoustic Sensing) technology, which provides early warning of potentially damaging activities, crucial in across the Mediterranean which is subject to the effects of climate change, as members of the Joint Task Force (JTF) and its it work in SMART cables.
“The agreement with Telecom Egypt is key to the project as Egypt is an essential transit route for submarine cables due to its privileged position between Europe, Asia, and Africa," said Albi.
"It is a very valuable connection to link East to West and North to South. With Medusa, we will also contribute to diversifying traditional routes such as those that land in Alexandria or Suez.”
Telecom Egypt will provide infrastructure across Egypt with onward connectivity to more than 140 landing points across 60+ countries. The company is also developing multiple layers of its infrastructure diversity, such as establishing new submarine landing stations and crossing routes.
Capacity spoke to Albi at length for the upcoming Subsea Connect Journal newsletter, due out later this month. Sign up to read the full interview.
