Qatar's Ooredoo to lay 'strategic' Gulf data cable, CEO says

Qatar's Ooredoo is to build a "strategic" undersea cable connecting Gulf Arab states and eventually boosting data transfers between Europe and Asia, the telecom operator's chief executive told AFP ahead of a Thursday announcement.

Ooredoo's Fibre in the Gulf (FIG) project, in partnership with France's Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), will connect seven countries in the region –- Qatar, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq -- positioning the Qatari telecom firm to meet growing demand in Europe and other parts of Asia.

Ooredoo Group CEO Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo called the cable "strategic" as it would connect Gulf Arab states with "the lowest latency, highest capacity cable in the region".

Just under 2,000 kilometres (more than 1,200 miles) of looped cable will connect the seven Gulf Arab countries with the project due for completion towards the end of 2027.

Fakhroo said the Gulf cable would form the "anchor" for a corridor "connecting to India and Singapore," and "creates the possibility... to create a land-based cable that will go from Iraq directly to Turkey, (from) Turkey directly to Europe and that circumvents the whole Red Sea and Suez Canal".

- 'Bottlenecks' -

The Ooredoo CEO declined to reveal the project's cost but said the company was "looking to commit close to half a billion dollars in the next few years... whether it's land-based or sub-sea".

In the past, global internet and telecom cables have followed the shipping route through the Red Sea but there been mounting concern for their security since late 2023 when Yemen's Huthi rebels began attacking passing merchant vessels in solidarity with the Palestinians.

"What people tend to forget or not realise is close to 30 percent of the world connectivity flows through the region," Fakhroo said.

"Ninety percent of the world connectivity between Asia and Europe flows to this region. You have significant bottlenecks today on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden."

To boost security, the new cable "will be buried" under the seabed, Fakhroo said.

"It will be the only cable in the region, and one of the first cables of this nature, which is buried under the sub-sea surface by more than a metre and a half (nearly five feet), which gives it extreme security features and resiliencies.

"In our markets and our neighbouring markets, when there is a fibre cut, however unfortunate, there is a deterioration in connectivity of quality, because all that data is transferred to our other routes which are already saturated," Fakhroo said.

"So creating a new highway which is faster, more secure, will bring more reliable, faster data."

ASN, a leading company in the manufacture and installation of submarine cables, is majority owned by the French state after the country's State Participation Agency acquired an 80 percent stake at the end of December from Finnish group Nokia.

ASN CEO Alain Biston said the project was "a game-changing initiative that will mark a turning point in regional connectivity across the Gulf Cooperation Council".

"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," he said.