center3 taps Ciena for its 2Africa submarine cable build
center3, a wholly owned subsidiary of stc Group, has selected Ciena's solutions to carry traffic on its fiber pairs on the new 2Africa submarine network.
The 2Africa submarine cable system, which lands in Saudi Arabia at Jeddah and Yanbu, provides high-bandwidth connectivity onward to three continents: Africa, Asia and Europe. By leveraging Ciena’s 800G technology, center3 can serve regional and international digital needs with advanced communication, cloud, and data center hosting services.
Specifically, center3 will be able to take advantage of Ciena’s GeoMesh Extreme, end-to-end network architecture—overland and undersea—that includes four main elements: optical, switching, management and software and services.
2Africa is an "Open Cable" owned by a consortium of global partners. The consortium includes eight members, namely, CMI, Meta, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange, stc (center3), Telecom Egypt, Vodafone, and WIOCC.
At 45,000km, 2 Africa connects 33 countries through 46 landing stations. It is expected to drive strong economic growth in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.
“center3 is committed to achieving 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 for center3. “The 2Africa submarine cable is a significant step forward in realizing 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.”
Alhajeri added that its ongoing relationship with Ciena influenced it to use the company for this project. “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,” Alhajeri said.
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Sean Buckley
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