Telecom Egypt launches Mediterranean subsea link on 2Africa cable system

Telecom Egypt announced the activation of a Mediterranean subsea link on the 2Africa subsea cable system, enabling a high-capacity connection between Port Said, Egypt, and Marseille, France via Genoa, Italy.

Telecom Egypt deployed Cisco’s cutting-edge Network Convergence System (NCS) for its 2Africa Mediterranean segment. Enabled by Cisco’s cutting-edge NCS, the system offers data transmission powered by Acacia’s multi-haul coherent module, delivering high performance with less power per bit. It allows network operators to enhance capacity across any cable, enabling precise adjustments to optical transmission signal bandwidth, modulation format, and spectral efficiency.

The exponential growth of capacity-intensive applications such as cloud and AI services in the region is fueling the demand for expanded subsea network capacity, which requires advanced coherent transmission systems of high performance. This project enables Telecom Egypt to maximize the potential of its subsea assets on the 2Africa subsea cable, enhancing the efficiency of its the cable operations and boosting international traffic capacity.

Spanning 45,000km, 2Africa is the longest subsea cable system in the world, interconnecting Europe, Asia and Africa, jointly owned and developed by a consortium comprising China Mobile International, Meta (Facebook), Bayobab (formerly MTN GlobalConnect), Orange, center 3 (stc Group), Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.

Supplied by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), the 2Africa cable system has a design capacity of up to 180Tbps with 16 fiber pairs on key parts of the system.

In June 2024, Airtel Africa announced the successful activation of the 2Africa submarine cable system with its initial phase linking Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa.

Due to the crisis in the Red Sea, the completion of the whole 2Africa cable system has been delayed, especially for its connection between Europe and Asia. Submarine Networks