[Left to right: Jean-Luc Vuillemin, executive vice president, Orange; Wu Qianjun, chief executive officer, PEACE Cable International; and Fredrick Chui, chief commercial officer, PCCW Global]
The news follows the draft agreement that was signed during Capacity Europe 2018 between PCCW Global and HENGTONG Group, which was followed by a landing party agreement between PCCW Global and Orange a few months later. PEACE Med is the Mediterranean section of the larger PEACE cable system.
“For Orange, PEACE is a major investment as it will provide greater route diversity, improved connection security and guaranteed support for increased capacity across all regions in the Indian Ocean zone, particularly Réunion and Mayotte,” said Jérôme Barré, chief executive officer, Orange Wholesale and International Networks.
Under the terms of the agreement, Orange will supply and operate the cable landing station in Marseille, linking it to one of the city’s major data centres and giving it onward connectivity the European Network as well as the Americas thanks to access to the transatlantic network accessible from France.
“Our collaboration with Orange is a critically important step towards bringing PEACE online and we trust the capabilities and vast experience of their teams in France to provide a successful and timely delivery of the European leg of the project,” added Marc Halbfinger, chief executive officer, PCCW Global. “Orange has vast experience in submarine cable infrastructure development. So we are confident that Orange will not only successfully provide the necessary cable infrastructure in France, but also benefit from being one of the first major users of the PEACE cable to connect important and growing traffic from Africa to Europe.”
Totalling 12,000km in length, PEACE (Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe) will connect France to Pakistan through a single point in Marseille by 2021. The system will use the Europe to Asia route and the city of Mombasa in Kenya via a short route towards the Indian Ocean. In taking this path, PEACE is set to benefit from low latency connectivity and there is also the option to extend to South Africa in the future.
“The PEACE project has been progressed very well and the equipment manufacturing has been achieved more than 60%. The system will be ready for service on time based on its schedule,” continued Wu Qianjun, vice president of Hengtong and CEO of PEACE. “We are confident that PEACE will provide low-cost capacity for those fast-growing regions and enhance the routing diversity in Asia, Africa and Europe.”
