Nokia announced on Monday that it is supplying its subsea optical solutions for the Medusa Submarine Cable System owned by AFR-IX Telecom that aims to connect North Africa and Europe when it goes live later this year.
The 8,760km Medusa cable system will leverage Nokia’s 1830 GX Series platform and ICE7 coherent optics – which Nokia says is capable of transmitting tens of terabits per second per fibre pair – to deliver high-capacity, low-latency connectivity with optimal cost and power efficiency per transmitted bit.
The Medusa system features a design capacity of 480 Tbps with 24 fibre pairs running at 20 Tbps per pair. The system features 17 landing points in Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, and Spain on the north Mediterranean coast, and Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia on the south coast.
Medusa is designed as an open-access system that promises to create a high-capacity digital corridor from the Atlantic coast through the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea that will support the rollout of 5G, the growth of cloud infrastructure, and increasing bandwidth demands of AI across the region.
“Medusa is helping to deliver new, faster and more reliable connectivity to millions of people, opening the door to greater innovation and deeper integration into the global digital economy,” said John Harrington, SVP and head of NI Europe, MEA & APAC Sales at Nokia.
“With Nokia’s subsea optical solution, we will be able to deliver greater value to our customers by offering faster, more reliable connectivity at a lower cost, with the flexibility to scale as needs evolve,” said Miguel Angel Acero, CTO and founder of Medusa in a statement.
The Medusa cable system, first announced in 2022, is funded by AFR-IX Telecom, Orange and CEF (Connecting Europe Facilities) grants from the EU. The system is being built by Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), which Nokia owned when the contract was awarded in 2023, but sold to the French government in a deal that was completed in January 2025.
Nokia scaled up its optical portfolio in July last year after it struck a deal to acquire Infinera for US$2.3 billion.
The Medusa cable is scheduled to be ready for service in the fourth quarter of this year.
