Batelco recently selected SubCom to provide and install a fiber-optic submarine cable for the Al Khaleej Cable that will branch from SEA-ME-WE 6 to extend connectivity from Bahrain to other regional countries.
A press release said that the order from Batelco, a telecom company that is part of the Beyon Group, will significantly enhance the data exchange capabilities of the Kingdom of Bahrain. The 1,400-km-long Al Khaleej Cable that will connect Bahrain to the regional countries of Qatar, UAE and Oman, will substantially boost Batelco’s capabilities and strengthen regional connectivity.”
“We are delighted to partner with SubCom,” said Batelco Chief Global Business Officer Hani Askar. The new subsea cable will create a layer of network diversity and resilience for the heavily used routes connecting the Middle East towards Europe and Asia. Batelco joined the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable consortium in February 2023.
Work on the SEA-ME-WE 6 cable, a 21,700 km-long subsea telecommunications data cable system, began in early 2022 and is scheduled for completion in 2025. It is designed to offer one of the lowest latencies available between the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Western Europe, able to transfer more than 100 terabits per second. All cable and equipment related to both SEA-ME-WE 6 and Al Khaleej will be manufactured by SubCom at its campus in Newington, New Hampshire.
SubCom Project Manager Benoit Duguet said that the company “is already at work manufacturing the cable and equipment necessary to complete one of the more extensive cable projects ever commissioned.”
Once completed, the cable and equipment for both the SEA-ME-WE 6 and Al Khaleej Cable systems will be deployed by SubCom’s Reliance Class cable ships. The SEA-ME-WE 6 subsea cable connectivity to Bahrain and Al Khaleej Cable is scheduled for completion by the second quarter of 2026.
A Bahrain project calls for a submarine power cable from its mainland to connect to the Hawar Islands, which are an archipelago of desert islands situated off the west coast of Qatar in the Gulf of Bahrain of the Persian Gulf.
Per media reports, the 25-km power cable will run from Al Bar, the southernmost tip on the island of Bahrain, to north-western Hawar. The goal is to see Hawar get a permanent electricity grid rather than depend on temporary power generators.
Per an on-line posting by Khalid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, a Bahraini deputy prime minister who heads the Ministerial Committee for Reconstruction and Infrastructure Work, the project is scheduled to start in the first half of next year and be completed in the last quarter of 2020. The Electricity and Water Authority has submitted a proposal about the route for the cable.
Bahrain said it was planning to develop sections of Hawar Island, in line with Bahrain’s National Economic Strategy for 2030. The electricity supply needs to be upgraded in order to sustain the development and to meet demands. The project is being funded by the Saudi Fund for Development.
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