Telecom Egypt and subsea data system supplier SubCom said on Wednesday that they have successfully completed two cable landing stations in Egypt for the India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) subsea cable system.
The 10,000-km IEX system is designed to directly connect Mumbai with Milan, Italy, with landing points in Oman, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Greece. The two new cable landing stations for Egypt have been installed at Zafarana2 on the coast of the Red Sea and Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean coast.
According to Telecom Egypt, IEX is the first international cable to connect via the Sidi Kerir landing station and the fourth at Zafarana2. Both cable landing stations are also interconnected via two diversified trans-Egypt terrestrial crossing routes for extra redundancy.
Mohamed Nasr, MD and CEO of Telecom Egypt, touted Egypt’s growing role as a reliable hub connecting Africa, Europe, and Asia, adding that IEX is the fifth subsea cable to land in Egypt over the past decade.
“By providing landing and crossing services at Zafarana2 and Sidi Kerir landing stations, and linking them through two novel crossing routes diverse from those already used by the current 14 subsea systems crossing Egypt, we are presenting our international partners with unique opportunities via our state-of-the-art, highly reliable services and continuously developed international infrastructure,” he said in a statement.
The IEX cable is owned primarily by China Mobile and Reliance Jio Infocomm, who are also building the India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) subsea cable connecting Mumbai with Singapore. SubCom was hired to engineer, manufacture, and deploy both cables, which will interconnect with each other.
Both systems sport 13 fibre pairs that utilise SubCom’s space-division multiplexing (SDM) and wavelength selective switch (WSS) ROADM technology.
The IEX is scheduled to be ready for service next year, while the IAX is expected to go live sometime later this month.
