Zain, Du, Vodafone Qatar, and Zajil cooperate to roll out high-bandwidth transmission cable

A GCC-wide telecom consortium has been formed to build a high-bandwidth transmission cable system for the region. The system, to be called the Middle East-Europe Terrestrial System (MEETS) – was both conceived and co-promoted by Zain, Du, Vodafone and Zajil.

Zain will be the landing party in Saudi Arabia, Du in the UAE while Vodafone Qatar will be in Qatar, and Zajil in Bahrain and Kuwait. A state-of-the-art 100G optical transport network (OTN) will be built on top of a 1,400km terrestrial fibre optic cable to sustain the growing bandwidth demand of the region. MEETS will cater to regional and international ICT companies, meeting their wholesale capacity needs, while providing a connection to new areas and end customers.

MEETS is designed to be an economically and technically competitive alternative for connectivity within the Gulf; it will also enable a terrestrial route to Europe for reduced latency and higher reliability. Carriers will be able to access MEETS from the Fujairah Landing Station or at the carrier neutral hub Datamena.

MEETS will have an initial capacity of 200Gbps and be carried over an optical ground wire associated with a regional high-tension electricity network – reducing the risk of cable cuts. The system will be managed by a 24/7 network operating centre (NOC).