The agreement was signed by Adel Hamed, CEO of Telecom Egypt and Manos Manousakis, chairman and CEO of IPTO.
Hamed said: “Telecom Egypt is continuously developing and extending its international infrastructure.
“Our collaboration with Grid Telecom will add explicit value to our robust reach worldwide to more than 140 destinations in over 60 countries.
“Our investments in new systems and solutions reiterate our leading position thanks to the multiple layers of our infrastructure diversity, which include establishing new subsea landing stations and crossing routes that will cater for the rising global demand for international capacities.”
Telecom Egypt says that the agreement is in line with its strategy of strengthening its infrastructure, expanding its international network and increasing its entry points to Europe by providing an eastern gateway via Greece through the new system.
The subsea system will connect Port Said in Egypt to the Greek island of Crete, making it the shortest, lowest latency Mediterranean path between Egypt and Europe, extending northwards to the Balkans region and adjacent important destinations in Central and Western Europe, and southwards to the Arabian Peninsula and other regions in Africa and Asia.
Earlier this year, Telecom Egypt and Grid Telecom signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) which set the groundwork for the exploration of different connectivity options between Greece and Egypt – through existing and future optical fibre links.
This was followed by the signing of an agreement to build this new subsea system extending the mutual international reach to neighbouring countries.
