NaiTel, a licensed telecommunications service provider in Jordan and the telecom arm of Aqaba Digital Hub (ADH – Jordan's largest carrier-neutral data centre), and telecom services provider Telecom Egypt, have announced the completion of the laying of the 15-kilometre express subsea cable Coral Bridge connecting Egypt and Jordan, the first direct subsea cable between the two countries in over 25 years.
After landing in Taba, Egypt, the cable was laid across the Gulf of Aqaba landing in Aqaba, Jordan. The partners say that Coral Bridge provides an express high-fibre-count digital link across the Gulf of Aqaba.
Coral Bridge is also the first telecommunication subsea system to land at Telecom Egypt's new cable landing point in Taba – part of the company's broader, recently established international digital infrastructure in the Sinai Peninsula.
In Jordan, the cable landed at ADH's Tier III carrier-neutral facility in Aqaba, supporting redundancy and recovery strategies for businesses, including enterprises and hyperscalers hosted in the data centre.
By leveraging both countries' strategic locations and Telecom Egypt's extensive subsea ecosystem, Coral Bridge provides seamless onward connectivity across Asia, Africa and Europe.
The 15-kilometre cable, equipped with 48 fibre pairs, is designed for transporting over 1 Petabit of data traffic, supporting the growing demand for data-intensive digital applications such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence. In addition, say the project partners, its short length significantly reduces latency and lowers data costs.
It's also an opportunity. As Mohamed Nasr, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer at Telecom Egypt, explains: "The strategic proximity between Taba and Aqaba creates a vital opportunity to establish a robust corridor for data connectivity across the Middle East and Europe."
He continues: "Through our collaboration with NaiTel, leveraging their carrier-neutral ecosystem in Aqaba via the Aqaba Digital Hub, the Coral Bridge subsea cable system will aggregate substantial regional traffic and channel it through Egypt's diverse terrestrial routes to the Mediterranean Sea. This critical infrastructure is key to meeting the region's growing data demands, supporting data centre expansion, and enhancing the resilience of subsea cable networks in the region."
