Orange has been chosen to construct and manage a French landing point for the Medusa Submarine Cable System.
The undersea cable system, which is expected to be 8,760 kilometers long, will reach Marseille in 2024. Its builders claim it will be the first to connect countries around the Mediterranean.
The project is expected to connect North African nations and six EU member states: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Cyprus.
Orange recently announced it was chosen as the leading submarine cable landing party in Marseille, standing out as the only operator in the area with the required infrastructure and technical ability to land and operate the submarine cable system.
Orange in charge
The organization is currently developing a submarine cable access plan, which includes investing in new urban infrastructure to increase the resilience of access and landing locations while linking up regional datacenters.
The amount of money spent on this venture wasn’t disclosed. Orange will also oversee the legislative, technical, security and environmental elements of the underwater cable’s arrival in Marseille.
“We are particularly pleased to welcome the Medusa cable to Orange’s infrastructure in the heart of the Mediterranean hub of Marseille as part of a strategic and ambitious project”, said Michaël Trabbia, interim CEO of Orange Wholesale & International Networks.
Benefits
“By combining our submarine cable landing stations with our new urban infrastructure, we are strengthening Marseille’s attractiveness as a digital gateway to Europe, and, beyond that, France’s sovereignty”, Trabbia added.
The Medusa cable aims to help develop a digital ecosystem in North African countries and positively impact regional economies. In North Africa, the line is slated to land in Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria.
The system will have sixteen landing points around the Mediterranean Sea. Each segment will be built with 24 fiber pairs providing a capacity of 20TB/sec per pair. The system should be ready for the West Mediterranean region by the end of 2024, followed by the eastern region in the first half of 2025.
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