Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia sits at a crossroads of major east-west cable corridors, with nine submarine systems on record serving the kingdom — a mix of established trunk routes and newer high-capacity builds reflecting the country's strategic position between Asia, Europe and Africa.
Connectivity at a glance
- Cable systems
- 8active
- 1 planned
- Landing points
- 0
- Resilience score
- 74
Cable systems serving Saudi Arabia
| Cable | Status | Ready for service | Length | Design capacity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PEACE Cable | active | 10 November 2022 | — | Up to 24 Tbit/s (per fiber pair) |
| Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1) | active | 23 June 2017 | — | 100 Tbit/s (20 Tbit/s per fibre pair) |
| MENA Submarine Cable System | active | November 2014 | — | — |
| I-ME-WE | active | 2010 }} | 12,091 km | 5.6 Tbit/s |
| Blue-Raman cable system | active | — | — | — |
| FOG2 | active | — | — | — |
| Gulf Bridge International | active | — | — | — |
| SAS-1 | active | — | — | — |
| Africa-1 | planned | — | — | 96 Tbit/s (12 Tbit/s per fiber pair)}} |
Landing points
Landing point records for Saudi Arabia are being compiled.
A crossroads on the cable map
Saudi Arabia occupies one of the more consequential positions in global submarine cable geography. The Arabian Peninsula juts into waters that carry traffic between Europe, East Africa, the Indian subcontinent and East Asia, and Saudi Arabia's coastlines on both the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf give it landing opportunities on two distinct corridor systems.
Nine submarine cable systems are on record connecting the kingdom to the international network. The oldest active system listed here is I-ME-WE, which entered service in 2010 and runs for 12,091 kilometres, linking the Middle East into a broader India–Middle East–Western Europe corridor. Asia-Africa-Europe 1 (AAE-1), active since 2017, represents a later generation of high-capacity infrastructure along broadly similar geography. Together, these two systems anchor the kingdom's long-haul connectivity to both European and Asian endpoints.
Beyond those trunk routes, Saudi Arabia is served by Gulf Bridge International, which addresses intra-Gulf connectivity — linking the peninsula's states across the Arabian Gulf — and by MENA Submarine Cable System, oriented toward regional Middle East and North Africa traffic. SAS-1 and FOG2 add further redundancy to the network picture, as does the Blue-Raman cable system, which extends connectivity toward South Asia.
The PEACE Cable, which entered service in 2022, adds a newer pathway, with routing designed to reach Pakistan, East Africa and onward toward Europe via a southern corridor — diversifying the geographic spread of Saudi Arabia's cable connections beyond the traditional Red Sea trunk.
Africa-1 remains at the planning stage, which would extend the kingdom's reach further into the African continent when realised.
Resilience and route diversity
Nine systems across two coastlines represent a meaningfully diverse portfolio by regional standards. The Red Sea corridor and the Arabian Gulf each carry distinct cable families, meaning disruption to one route does not automatically compromise the other. That said, the Red Sea itself is a single physical chokepoint for several of the east-west systems, and any event affecting that waterway would touch multiple cables simultaneously.
Landing point documentation
No specific landing point locations within Saudi Arabia have been documented in the Coral Sea Cables register. Work to verify and publish this data is continuing; confirmed landing station details will be added as the record is compiled.