Zain Group announces that its wholly owned subsidiary Zain Global Connect (ZGC) is connecting the Middle East with Europe through the Jeddah to Marseille (J2M ) submarine cable system. The J2M cable system will be a subsystem of the PEACE cable system, and Zain Saudi Arabia will act as the cable landing party in Jeddah, Suadi Arabia.

Zain Group is the pioneer of mobile telecommunications in the Middle East, established in 1983 in Kuwait as the region’s first mobile operator. Zain Group operates in 7 Middle Eastern and Africa countries with over 48.9 million active individual and business customers as of December 31, 2021.

Zain Global Connect (ZGC) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Zain Group and a licensed operator in Bahrain that was created by Zain Group as a wholesale division for the purpose of executing the Group’s strategic plan to enter the space of Data and voice services from the technology level point where all other mobile operators and data service carrier providers have reached.  ZGC proactively looks for and implements state-of-the-art equipment functionalities significantly supporting the growing needs of Zain operating markets and other global carriers for high-quality international connectivity.

The investment in the J2M cable system marks ZGC’s first subsea cable ownership. By investing in the J2M submarine cable and landing the cable in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Zain reconfirms its commitment to the Kingdom’s digital-savvy consumer and business community by making available a robust, fault-tolerant international connectivity platform that will support the ambitious digital transformation objectives of Saudi Vision 2030, while contributing to position the Kingdom as a global ICT and digital services hub.

ZGC will develop the J2M cable system in a collaboration with PCCW Global as well as PEACE Cable International.

As a subsystem of the PEACE cable system with open cable system architecture, the J2M cable system will be operated by Zain with full independence, to be ready for service in early 2023.

The PEACE cable system is a 15,000 km-long, privately owned cable system that provides open, flexible and carrier-neutral services for its customers. It is designed with the latest 200G transmission and WSS ROADM BU technologies, which provide the capability to transmit over 16Tbps per fiber pair servicing growing regional capacity needs. The PEACE cable system substantially reduces network latency by adopting shortest direct route connectivity, providing cost-effective capacity in an economically growing region and enhancing route diversity between Asia, Africa and Europe.

The Mediterranean segment of the PEACE cable system (PEACE-MED), which connects Egypt to France with branches to Cyprus and Malta, has been ready for service since last month. 

Other than Zain's J2M cable system, Cypriot operator Cyta and Malta operator GO have deleloped ARSINOE and LaValette cable systems respectively, as subsystems of the PEACE cable system.