Tunisia Gains Direct European Connection Through New Subsea Cable
Telecoms giant Orange has activated a new undersea cable connecting Marseille, France to Bizerte, Tunisia, establishing a high-capacity digital corridor between Europe and North Africa. The 1,050-kilometer cable, designated ViaTunisia, represents the first operational segment of the ambitious Medusa Submarine Cable System.
Orange serves as the landing party at both ends of the connection. The cable integrates directly into Orange's infrastructure in Marseille through a fiber ring linking the company's data centers in the French port city.
Massive Mediterranean Network Takes Shape
ViaTunisia forms part of the larger Medusa Submarine Cable System, an 8,760-kilometer network owned by African infrastructure company AFR-IX Telecom. When completed, the system will connect 17 landing points across Mediterranean coastlines.
The northern route will serve France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. Southern connections will reach Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and Egypt, creating comprehensive regional coverage.
Medusa operates as an open-access system, allowing any regional telecom provider to connect. The European Union co-financed the ViaTunisia segment through its Connecting Europe Facility Digital programme, covering 30 percent of construction and management costs via a grant agreement signed in December 2022.
Addressing Africa's Connectivity Resilience Gap
The new cable activation comes amid heightened focus on improving African internet infrastructure resilience. Recent incidents have demonstrated the continent's vulnerability to single points of failure.
In March 2024, four major undersea cables suffered simultaneous damage near Ivory Coast, causing widespread internet disruptions across African countries. The outage affected mobile networks, banking systems, and digital services in Nigeria and beyond.
East Africa experienced additional disruptions months later when submarine cables linking South Africa and Kenya went offline. These incidents followed earlier damage from Houthi rebel attacks on Red Sea cables, which had already compromised connectivity for portions of the continent.
Orange specifically cited resilience benefits in its ViaTunisia announcement, noting the cable was designed to minimize outages and multiply route options in a region prone to natural disasters.
Growing Demand Drives Infrastructure Investment
The cable activation reflects broader trends driving subsea infrastructure development across Africa. African countries, telecom operators, technology companies, and development institutions are accelerating investment in undersea routes to support expanding digital requirements.
Rising demand stems from cloud services growth, artificial intelligence applications, and increasing digital business adoption across the continent. These developments require enhanced capacity and improved reliability compared to existing infrastructure.
The Mediterranean region has witnessed significant subsea cable activity as operators seek to capitalize on growing Africa-Europe data traffic. Multiple projects are advancing simultaneously to serve the expanding connectivity market between the continents.
For African markets, each new cable connection represents reduced dependency on existing routes and improved redundancy for critical digital services. This infrastructure expansion supports the continent's ongoing digital transformation and economic development goals.