ACE Gabon is set to land the Medusa subsea cable in Port-Gentil, Gabon.
The telco, which is already part of the ACE subsea cable consortium, signed a construction and maintenance agreement with Medusa Africa to land the cable in the West African country.
Powered by AFR-IX Telecom, the Medusa submarine cable was initially set to have 17 landing points across Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Italy, Libya, Morocco, Portugal, Spain, and Tunisia.
Earlier this month, AFR-IX announced it had secured funding from the European Commission to develop the Medusa Africa subsea cable; an expansion of the Medusa cable to West Africa.
The Medusa Africa cable is set to offer 400Tbps of capacity and will provide enhanced connectivity, greater redundancy, and increased data capacity to support the growing demand for digital services in West Africa, said the Medusa Submarine Cable System.
ACE Gabon will act as the landing party in Gabon and will provide operational and maintenance support for the cable's lifetime (expected to be around 25 years). ACE Gabon will also own rights along the trunk of the Medusa system.
A branching unit to the Democratic Republic of Congo is also planned.
Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, Medusa is both the name of the cable and the name of the infrastructure provider behind it.
Orange Tunisie was announced as the landing partner and owner of the Tunisia branch of the Medusa cable in 2023. Medusa is said to be landing at Tunisie Orange’s cable landing station in Bizerte.
Orange will also provide the landing infrastructure for the cable’s landing in Morocco.
Medusa will additionally land in Egypt’s Port Said in partnership with Telecom Egypt, at which point it will then be connected to the Red Sea landing stations of Suez, Zafarana, and Ras Ghareb via Telecom Egypt's terrestrial network.
Libya’s state-owned LUIC will land the cable in Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya.
The Medusa Africa project is part of 21 initiatives selected in the third round of CEF Digital funding. This brings total funding to €420 million ($456m) under the first CEF Digital Work Programme.
AFR-IX has received another €3.7 million ($4m) in funding from the CEF Digital initiative for the ATMED Malta project, set to integrate Malta into the Medusa cable system. Under the CEF program, AFR-IX is also developing the ATMED Nador-DG and ATMED East-DG cable projects.
Port-Gentil in Gabon is currently only home to the Libreville-Port Gentil domestic subsea cable. The ACE, 2Africa, Maroc Telecom West Africa, and SAT-3 cables currently land in Libreville, Gabon.
