Telecom Egypt and subsea cable supplier SubCom have announced the completion of two subsea cable landing stations in Egypt.

According to a report from Developing Telecoms, the cable landing stations will land the India-Europe-Xpress (IEX) subsea system.

The 10,000km cable will connect India and Italy, with landing points in Oman, Djibouti, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Greece. It is owned primarily by China Mobile and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

One cable landing station has been installed at Zafarana 2 on the coast of the Red Sea and the other has been completed at Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean coast.

The IEX cable is the first international cable to connect via the Sidi Kerir landing station and the fourth at Zafarana 2. The stations are also interconnected via terrestrial crossing routes.

Mohamed Nasr, MD and CEO of Telecom Egypt, said: “By providing landing and crossing services at Zafarana 2 and Sidi Kerir landing stations, and linking them through two novel crossing routes diverse from those already used by the current 14 subsea systems crossing Egypt, we are presenting our international partners with unique opportunities via our state-of-the-art, highly reliable services, and continuously developed international infrastructure.”

The IEX cable is scheduled to go live next year.

SubCom was also hired to engineer the India-Asia-Xpress (IAX) cable, connecting Mumbai with Singapore, expected to be operational later this month.

Egypt has long been a key location for submarine cables. Much of the world's data that travels to and from Europe and Asia, as well as Northern Africa and the Middle East, goes through Egypt, putting around 17 percent of the world's Internet traffic in the hands of the country. Telecom Egypt has faced some criticism for the high charges given to submarine cable operators.

Telecom Egypt signed a Memorandum of Understanding with 4iG to build a subsea cable connecting Egypt and Albania at the end of last year.