2Africa, which lands in Saudi Arabia at Jeddah and Yanbu, delivers high-bandwidth connectivity onward to Europe, Africa and Asia.
Using Ciena’s 800G technology, center3 can serve both regional and international digital needs with communication, cloud, and data centre hosting services.
“center3 is committed to achieve its vision of making the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia the main digital hub connecting the continents of Asia, Europe, and Africa, and to become a worldwide leader in the digital economy in line with Saudi Vision 2030," said Fahad Alhajeri, CEO at center3.
"The 2Africa submarine cable is a significant step forward in realising this vision, placing the Kingdom at the heart of international data connectivity and solidifying its standing as a regional data center hub in the MENA region.”
“We chose Ciena for our new submarine network because of its proven technology, unparalleled track record in the submarine networking space, and long history of successful collaboration with stc Group.”
2Africa is an Open Cable owned by a consortium of global partners, comprised of Bayobab, China Mobile, Meta, Orange, Saudi Telecom, Telecom Egypt, Vodafone and WIOCC.
Spanning 45,000km in length, it is the longest subsea cable system in the world, connecting 33 countries through 46 landing stations.
“Given center3's major investment in the 2Africa cable system, it is positioned to accelerate the growth of digitisation across three continents," said Virginie Hollebecque, vice president of EMEA at Ciena.
"It will play a key role in expanding and fast-tracking competitive digital services across a vast region of the world—and in creating thriving digital societies. With Ciena’s industry-leading GeoMesh Extreme, center3 will enable its hyperscaler and carrier customers to support the rapid growth of 5G, streaming, content, gaming, and other big data applications for several hundred million people and businesses.”
