Qatari telco Ooredoo Group has announced plans to build a subsea cable connecting seven countries in the Middle East.

The cable will land in Qatar, Oman, the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq, providing 720Tbps of capacity across 24 fiber pairs.

Dubbed The Fiber in Gulf (FIG) cable system, the group said the cable will deliver exceptional connectivity to hyperscalers, businesses, governments, AI providers, data centers, and telecom operators.

The cable is set to be built by Alcatel Submarine Networks, though timelines for construction have not been provided, nor have specific landing points.

The project "aligns with Ooredoo’s ambitious strategy to lead in digital infrastructure by expanding network capacity and interconnectivity across the Gulf Cooperation Council and beyond,” according to Aziz Aluthman Fakkhroo, Ooredoo Group CEO.

Majority-owned by the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, Oredoo operates across nine countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. The company was the first in the region to become a Nvidia Cloud partner, as part of a deal signed in July last year. At the end of last year, the company looked to gain additional capacity from the Chinese tech giant for artificial intelligence.

Ooredoo also secured $552 million in financing to accelerate the growth of its data center business last year.

Oredoo Oman, an Ooredoo Group subsidiary, signed an agreement last year to land the 2Africa cable system in Barka and Salalah in Oman.

As well as the 2Africa cable, the Arabian Gulf is home to subsea cables such as AAE-1, Falcon, FOG, and the Qatar-UAE submarine cable system.