SMW6 RFS 2Q2026: Bypass Route: Bahrain/Kuwait/Jeddah
The consortium has been coy regarding its plan to bypass the Red Sea. My initial guess was that SMW6's main trunk would land in Oman and head across the Saudi Arabian desert to Egypt. I know now more. The main trunk will land in Bahrain and Kuwait and then go over land to Jeddah. If you view the map, you can see there is a highway making an almost straight line from Bahrain via Riyadh to Jeddah. This approach makes sense because it uses an existing right of way and hence sharply reduces construction costs. Whether existing terrestrial SA fibre was used or new stuff blown through an empty conduit, I don't know. It will be interesting to see if Blue-Raman, Africa-1, and other stalled projects develop similar bypass routes. I believe we will see quite a few Oman/SA bypass routes serving as main trunks for projects like Blue-Raman and AAE2. This will be distressing for Middle Eastern countries that are accustomed to landing the main trunk of trans-continental cables in the Red S...