Telecom Egypt signs deal for new undersea cable

Telecom Egypt has announced a $125m deal with Alcatel-Lucent for a new undersea cable.

The new cable will link Sidi Kerir in Egypt to Marseille in France, to provide Telecom Egypt with additional capacity and more robust connectivity to Europe.

The announcement comes amid ongoing disruption following the severing of two undersea cables off of Egypt last week.

The new 3,100 km TE North cable will be one of the largest in the region, with a capacity of 128 x 10Gbit/s on eight fiber pairs

Akil Beshir, Chairman and CEO of Telecom Egypt commented: "Telecom Egypt has decades long tradition of being the partner of choice to all Asia-Europe submarine cable systems, by providing the infrastructure for crossing from Red to Mediterranean Seas. Today, through TE North, we extend the Telecom Egypt service footprint by offering an option to extend this infrastructure from the Red Sea to Europe."