The Coral Bridge subsea cable connecting Jordan to Egypt is now operational.

The 15km-long cable landed at Aqaba Digital Hub, a carrier-neutral 12MW data center in Jordan. The facility is named after and located at Aqaba, the country’s sole coastal city.

Coral Bridge’s length is short relative to other international subsea cables because the Egyptian cable landing station (CLS) is located at Taba, which, along with Aqaba, sits on the Gulf of Aqaba’s coastline.

Coral Bridge will be the first cable to land at Telecom Egypt's new Taba CLS. It is equipped with 48 fiber pairs and is designed to transport more than 1Pbps of traffic.

The 1998 Taba-Aqaba cable, from the National Electric Power Company of Jordan, currently runs the same route. Jordanian telco NaiTel, which is the telecom arm of Aqaba Digital Hub, and Egyptian telco Telecom Egypt managed the project.

According to a press release, this is the first direct subsea link with Egypt in over 25 years.

CEO of Telecom Egypt, Mohamed Nasr, said: “The strategic proximity between Taba and Aqaba creates a vital opportunity to establish a robust corridor for data connectivity across the Middle East and Europe.”

Egypt’s strategic position and control over the Suez Canal have made it a landing point for more than 15 cables. Telecom Egypt recently completed the landing of the 21,000km Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe 6 subsea cable system in Egypt’s Port Said and Ras Ghareb.