Orange, PCCW Global and PEACE have signed an agreement to deploy the new submarine cable PEACE Med, marking the arrival of the first Chinese private submarine cable in France.
An acronym for to Pakistan and East Africa Connecting Europe, PEACE is an open and neutral submarine cable system invested by Hengtong Optic-electric (HKT), the global information and energy network service provider.
Measuring 12,000 kilometres in length, PEACE will link France to Pakistan through a single landing point in the city of Marseille by 2021 using the Europe-Asia route, and to the city of Mombasa in Kenya via a short route towards the Indian Ocean that will ensure optimum latency and extend to South Africa in the future, reaching 15,000 kilometres totally.
Orange will supply and operate the cable landing station in Marseille to link it to one of the city’s major data centres, making it a gateway to the European network and the Americas through access to the transatlantic network accessible from France. Orange is the sole French operator in the industry with existing infrastructure and the technical expertise to land this kind of cable in France. The group is a major investor in over 40 submarine cables to date.
Moreover, Orange has acquired 500Gbps of capacity on the cable between Marseille and Kenya in order to support the growth of traffic in the Indian Ocean for several years. The objective is also to find alternative routes and to reduce its dependency on the EASSy cable which links Djibouti to South Africa.
Jérôme Barré, Chief Executive Officer, Orange Wholesale and International Networks, says: “For Orange, PEACE is a major investment as it will provide greater route diversity, improved connection security and guaranteed support for increased capacity across all regions in the Indian Ocean zone, particularly Réunion and Mayotte.”
Wu Qianjun, the Vice president of Hengtong and CEO of PEACE, said: “The PEACE project has been progressed very well and the equipment manufacturing has been achieved more than 60%. The system will be ready for service on time based on its schedule. We are confident that PEACE will provide low-cost capacity for those fast-growing regions and enhance the routing diversity in Asia, Africa and Europe.”
