- Telecom Egypt completes two key subsea landings for new cable project in the Red Sea.
- The initiative strengthens Egypt’s position as a strategic global digital corridor.
What happened: New cable landings strengthen Egypt’s Red Sea to Mediterranean link
Telecom Egypt has finalised two subsea cable landings in Ras Ghareb and Zaafarana, located along the western shore of the Red Sea. These deployments are part of a broader cable system project that will link Egypt’s Red Sea coast with its Mediterranean coast via the company’s existing overland infrastructure. The project includes multiple cable systems from different providers, hosted across diversified terrestrial paths to enhance redundancy and security. According to Zawya, this initiative will support the increasing demand for international connectivity and reduce latency between Asia, Africa, and Europe.
The landings are the latest developments in Egypt’s role as a digital hub, leveraging its geographic position between global traffic routes. Telecom Egypt, the country’s main telecom operator, aims to offer alternative, secure routes for global data traffic, particularly for hyperscalers and submarine cable providers.
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Why this is important
These subsea landings are not only technical milestones but also strategic moves in a wider competition among nations for digital infrastructure dominance. Egypt lies on the shortest direct path for submarine cables linking Asia to Europe, making it vital to internet resilience and performance. With over 20 subsea cables already crossing the country, this initiative solidifies Telecom Egypt’s ambition to turn Egypt into a core digital transit hub. The addition of Ras Ghareb and Zaafarana provides route diversity, which reduces the risks of network outages due to single-point failures.
By investing in this infrastructure, Egypt positions itself as a critical player in the global data economy, countering increasing regional competition from Saudi Arabia, which is expanding its own digital infrastructure through projects like MENA Hub by stc. The move also reflects growing demand from cloud providers and content platforms seeking reliable intercontinental routes. While the project improves Egypt’s connectivity offer, the real challenge lies in ensuring regulatory and security frameworks match the growing complexity of international data transit.
