Orange-Morocco announces its participation in the Medusa project
The telecommunications operator Orange-Morocco announced today, Monday 16 January, its participation in the major digital connectivity project “Medusa”, which aims to link Europe and Morocco through a submarine cable, the longest in the Mediterranean.
In order to provide a safe, open, and effective interconnection solution between Europe and Morocco, Orange Morocco and Medusa Submarine Cable System have signed a contract, the company announced in a statement.
“Orange Morocco has decided to invest in new submarine cable infrastructure in the Nador region to strengthen Morocco’s attractiveness as a gateway for digital exchanges in Africa. This new infrastructure will also strengthen the country’s digital sovereignty,” said the operator.
In concrete terms, the system will link the two shores and will have 16 anchor points in the countries participating in the project, including Morocco.
The goal is to meet the current challenges of submarine connections, i.e. to establish new routes to diversify and relieve data traffic, gain capacity with more cabled fibres and promote free access to all European stations. The cable system will include segments offering up to 24 fibre pairs, with a capacity of 20 Tbps per fibre pair, the operator explains.
“We are particularly proud to contribute to the trans-Mediterranean digital connectivity project by deploying the terrestrial and submarine cable infrastructure in the Nador region, which will link Morocco to the North African and Southern European countries involved in this project,” said Hendrik Kasteel, CEO of Orange Morocco. Hendrik Kasteel, CEO of Orange Morocco.
“By connecting our fibre infrastructure to this Mediterranean system, we will strengthen Morocco’s attractiveness as the digital gateway to Africa, while affirming Morocco’s digital sovereignty.”
In addition, Orange-Morocco mentioned the project to integrate the first African fibre optic backbone network called “Djoliba”, the result of the pooling of more than 20,000 km of the Orange group’s terrestrial and submarine infrastructures in West Africa, for an end-to-end end-to-end insurance link between eight countries in the region.