VSNL joins telecom bigwigs for Mideast cable

CAIRO: Telecom companies from Egypt, Italy, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates plan to build a submarine cable linking Europe to India through the Middle East, Telecom Egypt said on Monday.

State-controlled Telecom Egypt has signed a memorandum of understanding on the project with Etisalat of the UAE, Saudi Telecom, Telecom Italia Sparkle and VSNL of India, it said in a statement. Telecom Italia Sparkle is a unit of Telecom Italia SpA.

The cable will use dense wavelength division multiplexing and would have a design capacity of at least 2,560 gigabits a second, it said.

The parties expect to award construction contracts for the project by the end of 2006 and the target for having the cable ready for service is the middle of 2008, it added.

The state-owned newspaper al-Ahram said in September that the cable would cost a total of $520 million and the Egyptian government has issued a licence for it.