Ooredoo On The March: The FIG Cable & A Purported Iraqi Transit Route To Europe

Ooredoo is a multinational mobile service provider with operations in Algeria, Tunisia, Palestine, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iraq, Oman, Maldives, and Indonesia. Its 2025 revenues were $6.4 billion revenues. Like many multinational mobile carriers such as Vodafone and Bharti, Ooredoo is becoming an important subsea cable player. Its first noticeable success was winning the competition to host the 2Africa CLS in Oman. More recently, Ooredoo announced in January 2025 the Fiber In The Gulf (FIG) cable that will link Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Oman, and Saudi Arabia.

Due to the short distances between the countries involved, this 24 fibre pair cable is expected to achieve 720 Tbps or 30 Tbps per pair, a Middle East record. The shorter the distance between DWDM optical nodes, the less optical errors accumulate, and hence the greater the throughput. The higher optical power or intensity required for long subsea spans inevitably creates nonlinear errors or optical distortion that limit throughput. So a short span requires less optical intensity (smaller amplitude) and this keeps the bit error lower. This is why deep sea cables spanning 5,000 kilometers or more generally operate around 20 Tbps a pair versus FIG's much higher 30 Tbps. ASN will manufacture and deploy the cable's wet segment.

Project progress has been slow. Ooredoo and the UAE's Du just reached a landing agreement. Interestingly, Ooredoo just bought Iraqi long haul dark fibre from iQ, an Iraqi long haul network that sells dark fibre and lit transport services. Winston Qui of Submarinenetworks.com speculates that Ooredoo is building a Middle bypass route to Europe. This seems quite plausible. Iraq has traditionally been the obstacle to affordable bypass pricing. I was quoted a few years ago a $110K 100G MRC for Iraq or Dubai to Frankfurt. Long haul prices across Turkey have fallen sharply so it is possible that Ooredoo might create an affordable, high capacity route to Europe.

This angle makes a lot of sense when you consider that Saudi Arabia's regulators are refusing to sell dark fiber to subsea cable consortiums, probably because they want to filter the Internet traffic and engage in large scale surveillance. First of all, subsea cables have privacy obligations and cannot allow unelected governments to filter traffic for national security reasons or because they are engaging in censorship or cultural repression. Secondly, it completely undermines ISP economics. Right now an AAE1 100G wave linking Marseille and Singapore ranges from the low 20Ks to the mid-30Ks. Lit Saudi capacity would raise that into the 60K range and above. In my view the Saudi Arabians are overplaying their hand.

Map of the Fiber In the Gulf Fibre Optic Subsea Cable

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