One of the spokespersons said a week after the announcement of a Saudi-backed fiber-optic project in Syria, an Iraqi-Emirati consortium plans a $700 million subsea-and-terrestrial data cable linking the United Arab Emirates to Turkey via Iraq.
Gulf neighbours Saudi Arabia and the UAE are in a scramble to capture the need to connect within the region and also to lure investment into data centers.
One of the three members of the consortium reported to Reuters that the Iraqi-UAE project, called WorldLink, would consist of an undersea cable between Fujairah in the UAE and Faw peninsula on the Gulf of Iraq, which will subsequently be extended on land north to the Turkish border, Ali El Ekabi, the director of Tech 964.
El Ekabi claimed that the project will be privately financed and that it will be completed in four to five years and is aimed at “hyperscalers, international carriers, and AI applications.” It seeks to alleviate congestion in current east-west data routes and create shorter transit times compared with routes traversing the Suez Canal.
However, the Emirati foreign ministry failed to reply to comment requests. It is the second new project of this kind that is planned within the region. Saudi Arabia and Syria declared on February 7 plans to set up a fibre-optic network under a wider investment package.
The project was termed as an approximately $1 billion dollars initiative to restore the infrastructure of Syria and make it an information passageway connecting Asia and Europe.
The sponsors of WorldLink, in addition to Tech 964, are the Iraqi-Kurdish DIL Technologies and the UAE-based Breeze investments as indicated by El Ekabi, the son of the Iraqi real estate billionaire Namir El Ekabi.
Iraq, which is trying to market itself as a stable transit corridor after decades of conflict, launched a $17bn “Development Road” rail-and-road plan in 2023 to connect Faw to Turkey.
