The 2Africa cable is now a catalyst for digital transformation in the Saudi Kingdom
Center3, the infrastructure subsidiary of Saudi telco stc, has chosen Ciena’s 800G platform to light up its fibre pairs on the new 2Africa submarine cable system.
The company was launched last October as the owner of the digital infrastructure assets owned by stc group, including data centres, submarine cables, international points of presence, and internet exchange points.
At the end of April, center3 and Meta landed the world’s longest subsea cable at Jeddah and Yanbu, two of the planned four landing locations in Saudi Arabia. The 2Africa subsea cable is more than 45,000 km long and will connect 33 countries when the project completes in 2024 linking the Gulf with Europe Asia and Africa.
The cable should make four landings: in Saudi Arabia, Jeddah and Yanbu, all of which have recently been completed, say the organisers. Duba will be hooked up later this year and Al Khobar in 2024. 2Africa is an “Open Cable” owned by a consortium of global partners, including center3.
“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. 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 centre hub in the MENA region,” said center3 CEO Fahad Alhajeri.
“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,” he added.
“Given center3’s major investment in the 2Africa cable system, it is positioned to accelerate the growth of digitization across three continents,” said Ciena VP of EMEA Virginie Hollebecque. “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.”
To the cloud and beyond with Oracle
Last month, center3 completed a 9.6MW expansion of its data centre Khurais in Riyadh. The expansion enhances center3’s hosting capacity for customers and accelerates the development of the MENA region’s digital industry. center3 aims to reach over 300MW of managed capacity in the next few years, not just within Saudi Arabia but beyond as well.
Center3 separately announced a strategic collaboration with Oracle to provide hosting and data services for the planned Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region as well as support the expansion of the existing Oracle Cloud Jeddah Region.
The planned Oracle Cloud Riyadh Region is part of a US $1.5 billion investment from Oracle to expand cloud infrastructure capabilities in the Kingdom – its sixth in the Middle East region.
“This strategic collaboration will allow us to grow our business and support the digital economy of the region. We are confident that this long-term partnership will empower both center3 and Oracle to achieve new heights of success,” said Alhajeri.
“Oracle is driving one of the fastest expansions of cloud services offered by any major cloud vendor in Saudi Arabia to help boost cloud computing capacity in the Kingdom,” said Oracle cloud tech SVP MEA Nick Redshaw.
In April, center3 signed an agreement to provide hosting and data services to Huawei to help it expand its cloud footprint in the region and meet the growing demand for cloud services.