UAE-based telecommunications operator du has announced a partnership with Cyprus-based subsea infrastructure provider Datawave Networks to land the Singapore-India-Gulf (SING) subsea cable system in the UAE, strengthening regional connectivity and enhancing global data routing options.
The SING cable is designed as a low-latency connectivity route linking major digital hubs across the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. In addition to the UAE landing point, planned cable landings include Muscat in Oman, Mumbai and Chennai in India, Kedah in Malaysia, and Singapore, creating a new East–West digital corridor across key growth markets.
Du confirmed that the UAE landing point will be established at its cable landing station in Kalba. The project is expected to reduce reliance on traditional subsea routes such as the Red Sea corridor, improving route diversity and strengthening network resilience for international data traffic.
Karim Benkirane, Chief Commercial Officer at du, said the cable will support the UAE’s ambitions to position itself as a global hub for artificial intelligence, advanced compute infrastructure, and cloud expansion. The SING system is being designed to support high-capacity workloads including AI model training, real-time inference, and next-generation digital services.
The subsea system will feature 16 fibre pairs with a minimum design capacity of 18 Tbps per pair, providing scalable capacity to meet growing demand from hyperscalers, cloud providers, and enterprise customers across the region. Du also confirmed it will invest in the project, although financial details were not disclosed.
Datawave CEO Mark Wickham said the cable’s flexible architecture is intended to enable efficient scaling as AI adoption accelerates across the UAE, Gulf region, India, and Southeast Asia. He added that the UAE’s growing importance in global AI and data center ecosystems makes it a strategic landing point for future digital infrastructure.
The SING cable project has gained renewed momentum following investment from Cerberus Capital Management, which recently agreed to fund the construction and deployment of the system in exchange for a majority stake in Datawave.
