Gulf Bridge International, a submarine cable company owned by the Qatari and Kuwaiti governments, has signed an agreement to land its new cable in Iran, potentially transforming the Islamic Republic’s telephony and internet infrastructure.
When the cable…
Gulf Bridge International, a submarine cable company owned by the Qatari and Kuwaiti governments, has signed an agreement to land its new cable in Iran, potentially transforming the Islamic Republic’s telephony and internet infrastructure.
When the cable opens in the first quarter of 2011, Iran will benefit from greatly increased bandwidth to southern Europe at the western end of the cable and to India at the cable’s eastern end.
Telecommunications Company of Iran, the republic’s former state-owned monopoly, signed the landing agreement with Gulf Bridge, although neither company revealed where they would land the cable along Iran’s Gulf coast.
Gulf Bridge’s agreement with Iran means that the submarine operator now has deals in place to land its cable in six of the eight countries ringing the Persian Gulf.
In February, Gulf Bridge signed landing agreements with Du, Saudi Telecom, and Vodafone enabling it to land its cable in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. The company signed similar agreements with the Iraqi Telecom & Post Company in January and with Bahrain’s Batelco in March.
Gulf Bridge plans to invest US$445m developing the cable. It has already laid the stretch connecting Italy to Egypt and it is currently laying the stretch running from Egypt to Yemen along the bottom of the Red Sea.
Gulf Bridge’s investors are the sovereign wealth funds, the Qatar Investment Authority and the Kuwait Investment Authority, and the Qatar Foundation – a charity owned by the Qatari state.
