ALVAL/ORVAL Cable System in Service

ALGIERS – The Alval / Orval fiber optic submarine cable system (connecting Algiers and Oran to Valencia in Spain) is finally operational and its effective commissioning will allow Algeria to have, in the long term, a capacity of up to up to 40 Terabits, nearly 20 times the current needs of the country, thus significantly improving internet speed.

By Algerie Presse Service
January 14, 2021

This system, which was to be launched in December 2019, was only put into service on December 31, 2020 because of “financial, legal, administrative and technical constraints”.

The new system should make it possible to “efficiently” manage the flow of internet entering and leaving Algeria, the transfer of DATA while increasing the speed and the flow of information to Algeria, but also the connection capacities to home and in businesses, according to the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications.

Orval / Alval reinforces the two other submarine links passing through Annaba, including Medex with a capacity of up to 2 Teras, and a third Alpal 2 cable passing through Algiers via Palma Di Mallorca (Spain) with a speed of 85 Gigas, deemed “insufficient”.

The Alval (Algiers-Valence) and Orval (Oran-Valence) fiber-optic submarine cable precisely links the national communication network, from El Djamila station in Algiers and that of Oran, to the European network, at the city of Valencia. Its length exceeds 770 km of optical fiber under the sea.

With a lifespan of 25 years, this cable provides a very large available transmission capacity (up to 40 Terabits / s), nearly 20 times the current needs of Algeria (by the end of 2020, this capacity had reached 2.4 Tera, compared to January 2020 when it was 1.7 Tera).

According to the website of the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, the Alval / Orval cable has 4 pairs of optical fibers connecting the three stations. It will initially deliver 3×100 Gigabits / s per fiber pair and can scale up to 10 Terabits / s per fiber pair, for a total of 40 Terabits / s, using the latest technology at 100 Gb / s for each length of wave.

The total length of the submarine cable is 800 km, of which 770 km were laid under the sea. The system has nine repeaters, with 4 pairs of fibers, manufactured especially for the Orval / Alval system, as well as two units. connection, one of which was installed in the open sea and the other remains in reserve.

The Orval / Arval project was registered under the ORSEC plan as part of the security of the national communication network, following the incident that marked it during the 2000s, when Algeria had only one route international fiber optic communication.

This project makes it possible to effectively double and protect (redundancy in the event of a natural disaster) the two submarine links Algiers-Palma (Alpal2) in the center and Annaba-Marseille (SMW4) in the East, to offer a variety of points of international landing and to increase the capacity of the historical operator Algérie Télécom in the field of communications and broadband Internet.