Under the terms of the agreement, Telecom Egypt will purchase fibre cables from Hengtong while Hengtong will buy the fibre to cross Egypt from Telecom Egypt.
“I am very pleased with the signing of the landing party and crossing agreement as this marks the addition of another cable system to Telecom Egypt’s huge network of submarine cables crossing Egypt. This clearly exhibits that Egypt is the ideal digital route and partner of choice for international traffic from the East to the West,” said Adel Hamed, CEO, Telecom Egypt.
PEACE is the first Chinese privately owned subsea cable system, development of the system started in 2017 and has a RFS date of 2020. Once complete it will connect Pakistan, Djibouti, France, Kenya and as well as cross Egypt. Landing party agreements for Djibouti and Pakistan were previously signed with Cybernet acting as the landing party in Pakistan and Djibouti Teleco as the landing partner in Djibouti. In December 2018, PCCW Global and Orange signed on as landing partners of the system in France. The system is currently in the manufacturing stage and is designed to be extended southwards towards South Africa and eastwards towards South East Asia sometime in the near future.
"Thanks for Mr. Adel Hamed’s supporting for Hengtong. We aim not only to be the products and system supplier globally, but also to be the submarine cable system operator,” added Cui Genliang, chairman of the Hengtong Group. “About 6 years ago, Hengtong begun the cooperation with Telecom Egypt. We supplied our best products and services. In 2018, Hengtong invest in Egypt to set a fibre cable factory, making our products localization in Egypt so we made our cooperation closer. Now Hengtong invests in the PEACE cable system with the latest technology，and it will cross Egypt and connect Asia, Africa and Europe. We signed the LPA today, which is a milestone for PEACE cable system. That means we are building another highway bridge between Telecom Egypt and Hengtong. We hope to continue this long-term cooperation."
Along with Hamed and Genliang, Dr Amr Talaat, minister of telecommunication for Egypt; Wu Qianjun, vice president of Hengtong Group and CEO of PEACE; Jordick Wong, senior vice president of PCCW Global, also signed the agreement. In addition, Tan Huiliang, CEO of Hengtong International Business Unit signed the strategic cooperation letter of intent with Telecom Egypt.
