Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), a leading telecom service provider in Saudi Arabia, has announced the success of dropping a high-capacity submarine cable (Asia - Africa - Europe - I) in Jeddah.

The 25,000 km cable will connect Far East countries to Europe through the Middle East and Africa.

Minister of Communications and Technology Dr Mohammed Bin Ibrahim Al-Suwaiyel was present at the ceremony to launch the submarine cable. Also present were Dr Deif Allah Bin Ahmed Al-Zahrani, vice governor of the Communications and Information Technology Commission for competition and legal affairs, and Mobily CEO Ahmed Farrukh.

Farrukh noted that the success of Mobily in signing the submarine cable project agreement with a number of world leading operators will further improve the communication network infrastructure in the kingdom. It will help meet the growing demand for various telecommunication services and data from Mobily customers, he said.

Eng Mazied Al-Harbi, executive officer of technology at Mobily, gave a presentation on the submarine cable, its characteristics, the importance of the kingdom's location and its role as a global link. The cable extends for a distance of 25,000 km starting from Hong Kong and links Malaysia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Djibouti and Egypt before landing in Europe (Greece, Italy, and France). It has high transfer capacities of up to 40 terabits per second. - TradeArabia News Service