The Egyptian incumbent has partnered with equipment and solutions provider Alcatel-Lucent to use its technology, and announced today the TE-North cable has been provisioned with 40Gbps wavelengths across the Mediterranean and is in full service.
The cable, spanning 3600km, connects Abu Talat in Egypt to Marseille in France and provides access areas to Cyprus and other parts of the Mediterranean. The company said the upgrade in the system from a speed of 10Tbps to 20Tbps provides the equivalent transfer time of over 32000 HD movies in only 60 seconds.
“Telecom Egypt is very proud to take on the responsibility of serving the international telecommunications infrastructure along the Asia and Africa to Europe route with innovative proven technological advances,” said Mohamed Abdelrehim, CEO at Telecom Egypt. “International customers and international infrastructure contribute to TE’s top and bottom line and capture the attention of our investors towards the compelling geography of Egypt and the role of Telecom Egypt.”
France-based Alcatel Lucent originally struck a $125 million contract to construct the system and held a field trial on the system in 2010 to demonstrate its upgrade capability.
“Mixing our advanced 40G coherent technology with existing 10G channels enables operators like Egypt to best serve their customer and the end-users in the region with adequate speed and bandwidth to experience broadband multimedia services such as video with the highest quality,” added Philippe Dumont, president of Alcatel-Lucent submarine networks SAS.
Telecom Egypt cites a growing demand for next-generation services as a factor behind the upgrade, and believes the move will further enhance its capabilities to serve companies that use Egypt as a hub to transit traffic across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
