24/10/2018 Paris 14:25 GMT

During Capacity Europe 2018, the largest carrier event in Europe, Orange & PCCW Global have announced a partnership for the new submarine cable PEACE (Pakistan & East Africa Connecting Europe), a 12,000 km long, privately owned system expected to be ready for service in 2020.

The project plans to connect Pakistan, Djibouti, Kenya, Egypt and France. A further southern expansion to South Africa is planned for the phase 2. The partnership between Orange and PCCW Global will provide for the landing in France.

Orange will be the technical partner for the cable landing in Marseille. The cable will use the existing infrastructure of Orange in Marseille associated with a cable landing corridor, which has demonstrated its unequaled reliability over the past years. The system will terminate in a carrier-neutral DataCenter.

The network topology will substantially reduce network latency by adopting shortest direct route connectivity and enhancing route diversity between Asia, Africa and Europe.

The system design will adopt the latest 200Gbps and WSS technology, which provides the capability to transmit over 16 Tbps per fiber pair, servicing growing regional capacity needs.

Securing the route for internet traffic as demand from Orange customers increases

Once completed, PEACE will strengthen links between the three most populated continents in the world. Orange will benefit from additional capacity between Marseille & Mombasa, on a new system therefore providing, together with the existing systems EASSy and LION, additional resilience to Orange voice and broadband traffic in the Indian Ocean and in particular for the islands of Réunion and Mayotte.

Through this new partnership Orange confirms its position as a leading player in the submarine cable market. In this role, the Group aims to develop the quality of service of its worldwide network, while optimizing costs and adapting its presence in order to absorb the continually increasing volumes of data being exchanged. To meet user expectations for high-performance connectivity anytime, anywhere, Orange is constantly improving its global network with partnerships across oceans & major investment in new submarine cable projects.

“If Internet is a worldwide phenomenon, it is thanks to the submarine cable spanning the planet in providing that connectivity. This is why Orange continues to invest in building and optimizing its network infrastructure. Through our partnership with PCCW Global, Orange is set to secure and improve connectivity between Europe, East Africa & Asia and support the development of new uses for its consumer and enterprise customers” said Jérôme Barré, CEO Orange Wholesale & International Networks.

[ Download the press release Download (270.6 kB) ](https://www.orange.com/en/content/download/48600/1388657/version/1/file/CP_PEACE cable_24 october 2018.pdf)