By Zawya
Muscat: Omantel , the Sultanate's leading provider of integrated telecommunication services, has joined in a consortium with several East African telecommunications providers to lay the Gulf to Africa (G2A) undersea fibre-optic cable, which is set to revolutionise connectivity from Oman to East Africa, including Ethiopia and Somalia.
The G2A undersea cable represents the first phase of Omantel ‘s expansion eastwards into the African continent, providing cable connectivity to the Middle East, Asia and Europe and transforming Oman into a communications hub of the Middle East.
The G2A undersea cable consortium includes Omantel , Ethio Telecom from Ethiopia and Golis Telecom and the Telesom Company from Somalia. The state-of-the-art cable system, scheduled for completion by the end of 2016, will comprise 1,500km Subsea segment and a 1,500km terrestrial segment with a capacity 20Tbits of capacity with the latest 100G technology.
Commenting on the regional and global importance of the G2A project, the vice-president of Omantel Wholesale Sohail Qadir said, “This is the first step in our journey of expansion into Africa. We will connect Oman directly to Somalia via the Salalah cable landing point, and then extend the cable further into Africa to Ethiopia.”
