“All is going as planned regarding the implementation of the project,” ministry spokesperson Haitham Qaisi told the Jordan Times.
Given the ongoing fighting in Syria there had been some doubts as to whether the project would still go ahead. The 7,750km RCN is planned to travel directly through Syria and is being implemented in collaboration with the Syrian Telecommunications Establishment.
Other partners in the project include Turkish operator Turkcell, its wholly-owned subsidiary Superonline, the UAE’s Etisalat, Saudi Arabia’s Mobily, Jordan Telecom and Jordanian conglomerate Mada-Zain Consortium.
The RCN connects from Fujairah in the UAE to Istanbul in Turkey and onwards to Europe, providing a gateway to the internet for an estimated two billion people, and will be the Middle East’s longest redundant terrestrial communications infrastructure.
An agreement for the project was reached in January 2011, and it is expected to launch during the third quarter of 2012.
