Etihad Salam Telecom (Salam) and AFR-IX Telecom have reaffirmed strong progress on the Medusa Submarine Cable System, one of the Mediterranean’s most significant connectivity projects. The update was shared during a bilateral meeting at Connected World 2025 in Riyadh, where both companies confirmed that all components of the partnership remain firmly on schedule.
Under the agreement, Salam serves as the International Gateway Partner for the Medusa cable landing in Saudi Arabia. The company provides terrestrial backhaul, interconnection and capacity access for hyperscalers, cloud service providers and regional carriers—an essential role supporting Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 ambition to position the Kingdom as a major digital hub linking Europe, Africa and Asia.
Spanning approximately 8,700 km, Medusa is the longest subsea cable in the Mediterranean. Equipped with ROADM and Space-Division Multiplexing (SDM) technologies, it offers a total design capacity of 480 Tbps. The system will connect 11 countries: Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan, dramatically enhancing regional data flows and global bandwidth availability.
Both Salam and AFR-IX emphasized the cable’s strategic importance. Salam highlighted the project as a cornerstone of Saudi Arabia’s rising status as a regional connectivity powerhouse, while AFR-IX noted Medusa’s transformational impact on telecommunications across the Mediterranean basin. The collaboration aligns with regional infrastructure priorities and continues to progress smoothly across all stages.
By combining Salam’s extensive terrestrial and data-centre infrastructure with AFR-IX Telecom’s subsea cable expertise, the partnership is set to deliver more resilient, higher-capacity and future-ready digital connectivity for Saudi Arabia and the wider Mediterranean region.
