ETISALAT Group and six other operators, Mobily (Saudi Arabia), Jordan Telecom, Mada and Zain (Jordan), Syria Telecom (Syria) and Superonline, a Turkcell Group company, from Turkey have announced the construction of the Middle East’s longest fully-redundant terrestrial communications infrastructure along a 7,750 kilometre round trip route called the Regional Cable Network Project (RCN). The RCN project will extend from the city of Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates to Istanbul in Turkey and then to Europe and will serve as a gateway to the internet for two billion people.
The project was signed by the seven telecom operators during a ceremony held in Ankara , Turkey, recently and would create an investment value of half a billion dollars and will be operational in the second quarter of 2011.
Speaking after the recent announcement, Mr. Wael Ammar, chief commercial officer, Etisalat Nigeria, said the RCN is unmatched in terms of speed, quality, ease of upgrade, redundancy and reliability.
Ammar stated that as the demand for intercontinental connectivity continues to grow at a remarkable rate, world governments are encouraging investment in new technologies to bolster the performance of their national economies.
To this end, operators all over the world are deploying next-generation networks for both fixed-line and wireless environments which in turn allow an increasing volume of services to be provided to more consumers.
He added that the enormous advancement in technology education of the local population has driven the demand for greater capacity which will prove an enormous boost to the economy. “Etisalat is delighted to partner with six of the region’s leading operators in a project that will enhance lives and offer greater communication access to over 2 billion people all over the world,” Ammar said.
Starting from Fujairah (United Arab Emirates) and passing through Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Amman (Jordan), Tartous (Syria) and reaching Istanbul (Turkey), the RCN project’s fibre optic cable line will cover the entire Gulf region in the Middle East for the first time through a uniform infrastructure.  It will become the region’s longest fully-redundant terrestrial fiber infrastructure between Fujairah , one of the busiest nodes for submarine and fibre cables, and the West.