The Europe-Persia Express Gateway (EPEG) is a 10,000km fibre optic cable system providing Eurasia connectivity between Europe and the Middle East, bypassing Egypt. The EPEG cable offers route diversity from Frankfurt in Germany, across Slovakia and Czech Republic on one route, Austria and Hungary on the other route to reach Kyiv in Ukraine, through Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and the Persian Gulf to Barka in the Sultanate of Oman.
The EPEG consortium comprises Rostelekom, Vodafone (formerly Cable & Wireless), the Iranian Telecommunications Infrastructure Company (TIC) and Oman Telecommunications Company (Omantel).
The EPEG cable system offers a low latency route between Frankfurt and Barka, Muscat, with 9,430 km and RTD of 91.97 ms over the short route, and RTD of 98.51ms over the long route.
The EPEG cable system has an initial capacity of 540 Gbps (54*10Gbps), and design capacity up to 3.2Tbps.
The total cost of the EPEG cable system is about US$200 million.
The EPEG was put in operation in December 2012.