Ooredoo to hook up seven Gulf states to new submarine cableOoredoo to hook up seven Gulf states to new submarine cable

The Fibre in Gulf (FIG) project will call in at Qatar, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq, providing them with a low-latency route to a new corridor connecting Europe.

It will boast 24 fibre pairs and maximum throughput of up to 720 Tbps, and once up and running will support the rising volume of hyperscaler, telco, large enterprise and government data traffic.

"This historic project aligns with Ooredoo's ambitious strategy to lead in digital infrastructure by expanding network capacity and interconnectivity across the GCC and beyond," said Ooredoo's group CEO, Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo.

"We will deliver cutting-edge technologies to the region while ensuring sustainable growth for our investors through long-term revenue from rising data demand and market leadership in digital infrastructure," he said. "This initiative positions Ooredoo as a key player in addressing the rapidly growing data demand between Asia and Europe."

The job of deploying the new cable has been given to Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), which is in the process of being offloaded by Nokia to the French government.

"We are honoured to partner with Ooredoo on the Fibre in Gulf (FIG) submarine cable project, a game-changing initiative that will mark a turning point in regional connectivity across the GCC," said ASN chief executive Alain Biston. "Leveraging ASN's cutting-edge technologies and operational excellence, this state-of-the-art infrastructure will reliably deliver exceptional capacity and connectivity, empowering the region's digital transformation ambitions and establishing it as a pivotal hub for global data exchange."

A quick look at TeleGeography's submarine cable map shows that the Middle East is not exactly short of cable systems. However, there aren't that many that run from Iraq right the way round to the northern shores of the Red Sea and beyond.

2Africa – the world's largest subsea cable system – is one that does. It spans 33 countries on three continents, with capacity topping out at 180 Tbps. Other than that though, the only other one is FALCON, which has been in service since 2006 and offers maximum throughput of a modest 2.56 Tbps.

This lack of direct connectivity is not a problem per se, since the cables servicing various parts of the Middle East interconnect with one another. However, having one high-throughput system linking all these countries is likely to offer faster connectivity than a patchwork of cables of various capacities.

There is no word on when FIG is expected to enter service, but given the hype around AI and the unrelenting expansion of US hyperscalers to every corner of the planet – and all the data traffic likely to come with it – its deployment can't happen soon enough.