Photo by: Bloomberg
A new undersea cable linking Algeria to Spain was in the pipeline as telecommunications giant Alcatel-Lucent and the Algerian Ministry of Post, Information Technology and Communications inked a turnkey agreement last week.
The planned 560 km Orval fibre-optic undersea cable system spanning from Oran, Algeria, to Valencia, Spain, would be completed in 2016, delivering a 100 Gb/s system with an ultimate design capacity of 20 Tb/s.
The subsea cable would meet the increasing demand for high-speed, high-quality broadband connectivity and deliver broadband services to an estimated 42-million Internet users in Algeria and Spain.
Alcatel-Lucent said in a statement that it would lead the design and manufacture of the system, while IT Marine was tasked with the marine operations.
The Orval submarine cable system was part of Algeria’s Orsec plan to reinforce natural disaster mitigation, while strengthening international communications.