Mobily joins SEA-ME-WE-6 consortium to build a new submarine cable system connecting Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe

Etihad Etisalat Company (“Mobily”) announces its participation in the Southeast Asia - Middle East - Western Europe 6 (SEA-ME-WE 6) consortium to build a 19,200 km-long new undersea cable system connecting the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with 10 other countries.

This new system will enhance Mobily’s global network connectivity and offer one of the lowest latencies available between Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe, transferring more than 100 terabits per second. Furthermore, it will create an additional layer of network diversity and resiliency for the heavily loaded traffic from the Middle East toward Europe and Asia.

This announcement comes in line with Mobily's effort to enable the digital transformation journey of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 by empowering businesses with reliable infrastructure and stronger, far-reaching connectivity to provide digital services that are on par with international standards.

“Our investment in SEA-ME-WE-6 is a pivotal step toward achieving unparalleled global connectivity to Saudi Arabia’s digital ecosystem and to support the Kingdom's vision of becoming an international hub of telecommunications services and traffic. This new state-of-art system will bring faster and more reliable connectivity to all of our users in The Kingdom, and the region, as the demand for high-speed data is rising due to the digital transformation and development of emerging technologies such as 5G, IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality.” Says Eng. Thamer Alfadda, Mobily’s Senior Vice President of Carriers, Operators, and Wholesale Services.

In addition to Mobily, the SEA-ME-WE (6) consortium includes Singtel (Singapore), Telekom Malaysia, Telin (Indonesia), Bangladesh Submarine Cable Company, Bharti Airtel Ltd. (India), Sri Lanka Telecom, Dhiraagu (Maldives), Trans World Associates (Pakistan), Djibouti Telecom, Telecom Egypt, and Orange (France).

The SEA-ME-WE 6 submarine cable will land at Mobily’s new international cable landing station in the city of Yanbu. Its strategic red sea location, nearby Data Centres and Saudi Vision 2030 projects, positions it as one of the key cable landing sites for Saudi Arabia and the region.