English (UK) 
简体中文(中国) Orange Tunisia and Medusa Submarine Cable System signed an agreement on May 11 to deploy a submarine cable linking Tunisia (Bizerte) to Europe, via France (Marseilles). This cable will be built in compliance with the latest international standards and rules and will benefit the socio-economic participants in Tunisia.
Designed using the latest submarine optical fibre technologies, it will also offer a new, very high-speed connectivity solution and will improve the security of the existing Internet connectivity.
Medusa will be the first, and longest, submarine cable to connect all of the countries in the Mediterranean. Specifically, the Medusa cable system will connect the two shores of the Mediterranean and travel from Lisbon to the Egyptian city of Port Said, passing various Mediterranean countries en route. It will have 16 landing points in different countries including Portugal, Morocco, Spain, Algeria, France, Tunisia, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Egypt.
At more than 8,000 km in length, this new infrastructure will provide diversity and an additional route made up of several pairs of fibres with a capacity of 20 terabits each in order to meet Tunisia’s growing connectivity needs. Implementation is scheduled for the end of 2025.
Orange Tunisia previously set up its first international subsea cable in 2014, the Didon cable system linking Tunisia to Europe, in partnership with the operator Ooredoo Tunisia.
With the investment in a second submarine cable, Orange Tunisia continues to work to improve the service quality of its network and thus support the country’s digital transformation, while also strengthening Tunisia’s attractiveness as a continental digital hub.
As part of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) Digital programme, the project was granted of € 10 million financial support by the EU Commission.
