True to its position as a player committed to supporting the digital transition of the Kingdom, Orange Morocco has decided to invest in new infrastructure for hosting submarine cables in the Nador region to strengthen Morocco’s attractiveness as a gateway for digital exchanges in Africa, indicates a press release from Orange, emphasizing that this new infrastructure will also strengthen the country’s digital sovereignty.
“We are particularly proud to contribute to the trans-Mediterranean digital connectivity project by deploying the landing and submarine cable infrastructure in the Nador region, which will connect Morocco to the countries of North Africa and Southern Europe involved in this project. By connecting our fiber optic infrastructure to this Mediterranean system, we will strengthen Morocco’s attractiveness as a digital gateway to Africa, while confirming Morocco’s digital sovereignty,” explains Hendrik Kasteel, CEO of Orange Morocco, quoted in the press release.
“Orange Maroc is thus part of the Kingdom’s strategy aimed at accelerating the digital transformation of the Kingdom, as the ambition of the New Development Model (NMD) presented to His Majesty King Mohammed VI, may God assist him,” the press release underlines.
The long-term objective is to establish Morocco as a leading Digital & Technological Hub in Africa, with significant progress in the United Nations Online Service Index ranking (objective of being among the top 3 in Africa and among the top 40 globally).
For the operator, international connectivity is a real lever to achieve inclusive and sustainable economic growth and development. The Orange Maroc network is already connected to Europe via four submarine cables that offer a significant high-speed network as well as guaranteed quality of service.
With this project, Orange Maroc will contribute to the production of the first submarine cable to connect the main countries of the Mediterranean in partnership with Médusa.
Concretely, the same source continues, the system will connect the two banks and will have 16 landing points in countries, including Morocco. As part of its open innovation approach, Orange Morocco will share this new infrastructure with operators wishing to use it.
The aim is to address the current challenges of submarine connections, namely establishing new routes to diversify and decongest data traffic, gaining capacity with a greater number of fibres per cable and promoting free access to all European landing stations.
The cable system will feature segments that offer up to 24 fiber pairs, and a capacity of 20 Tbps per fiber pair.
In this sense, Orange Maroc intends to continue to invest significantly in connectivity projects both nationally and internationally. This will improve the quality of services offered to Moroccans.
Orange Morocco also aims to integrate the first African fiber optic backbone called “Djoliba”, resulting from the pooling of more than 20,000 km of terrestrial and submarine infrastructures of the Orange group in West Africa, for a secure end-to-end link between 8 countries in the region.
Through these various investments, Orange Maroc wishes to contribute to the acceleration of the national strategy of transformation and digital sovereignty aimed at making Morocco a Hub for the continent, concludes the press release.
2024-08-18 05:06:01